This weekend, Donald Trump used his daily White House coronavirus briefings to again urge Americans to take hydroxychloroquine, an anti-malaria drug that has not been shown to be safe or effective against Covid-19.
“What do you have to lose? Take it,” the president said on Saturday as he boasted that the US had amassed 29m doses of the drug. On Sunday, facing questions from the press about his aggressive promotion of an unproven treatment, he argued against waiting for the completion of clinical trials. “In France, they had a very good test,” he said. “But we don’t have time to go and say, ‘Gee, let’s take a couple of years and test it out, and let’s go and test with the test tubes and the laboratories.’”
Meanwhile, Dr Anthony Fauci, the country’s top infectious disease doctor, has repeatedly warned that there is no conclusive evidence to support using the drug. Asked whether it should be considered a treatment for Covid-19, he said on 24 March: “The answer is no.”
The story of how hydroxychloroquine was anointed the Trump administration’s miracle drug for the coronavirus pandemic is a distinctly modern tale of misinformation within a global information ecosystem beset by widespread uncertainty, fear, media fragmentation and hyper-partisanship. Belief in the drug’s potential to cure patients infected with the virus followed an extraordinary trajectory from a small study conducted in France (Trump’s “very good test”) to Silicon Valley social media influencers, Fox News and the largest bully pulpit: the White House.
But it’s also a story as old as medicine itself. When an epidemic killed thousands in ancient Rome, said Aaron Shakow, a research associate at Harvard Medical School and historian of medicine, the chief physician of the emperor Nero circulated a recipe for an old miracle cure.
“It was an attempt by Nero to sustain his legitimacy in the midst of this catastrophic event,” Shakow said. “Epidemics are dangerous to rulers.”
A deeply flawed study In early March, as the coronavirus pandemic accelerated its spread around the globe, a group of scientists in Marseille, France, launched an experiment to see whether hydroxychloroquine, a well-known old malaria drug, could be what everyone was searching for: a cure.
Most small scientific studies live and die within the rarified domain of academic journals, but the French trial had a much more auspicious debut. Before the study was even published, in the International Journal of Antimicrobial Agents (IJAA), a lawyer falsely claiming an affiliation with Stanford University appeared on Fox News’s Tucker Carlson Tonight to declare the results: a “100% cure rate against coronavirus”. From Fox News, it was only a matter of time (hours, in fact) before the drug was being hailed as a “game changer” by the president of the United States.
Trump made his first endorsement of hydroxychloroquine on 19 March. Export controls, shortages, overdoses and scientific recriminations rapidly ensued, but the controversy could not extinguish the power of presidentially endorsed hope. Across the globe and throughout diverse communities on the internet, hydroxychloroquine had been anointed the miracle cure for Covid-19.
The only problem? The study that all this fervid hope is based on doesn’t show what its authors claim it does.
The gold standard for a clinical trial is a double-blinded, randomized controlled trial (RCT). What this means in plain English is that the study has been designed to reduce biases that would render its results meaningless. Neither the physician nor the patients knows whether they received the drug (“double-blinded”), a safeguard that reduces the possibility that the doctor will treat the two groups differently. The researchers also do not get to choose which patients go into which group (“randomized”) and the makeup of the two groups is roughly equivalent (“controlled”).
The French hydroxychloroquine study did not follow any of these rules.
The treatment group and the control group were drawn from separate populations: the treatment group were all patients at the institution where the researchers worked, the Méditerranée Infection University Hospital Institute in Marseille, while the control patients came from other hospitals in the south of France. The treatment group (mean age 51.2) was significantly older than the control group (mean age 37.3), introducing another variable that could undermine the meaning of the results. The study was “open label”, meaning the physicians and patients knew which treatment they were receiving. The French researchers also treated some but not all of the treatment group patients with azithromycin, a common antibiotic, another complicating factor that was not randomized.
But even more important than these shortcomings in the design of the study is how the researchers chose to measure and report their results. Forty-two patients were initially included in the study. Three were transferred to the intensive care unit; one died, one left the hospital, and one stopped taking the treatment due to nausea. The other 36 eventually recovered, and those who received the drug cleared the virus from the system faster than those who did not.
If you had only heard about this study from the Fox News assertion of a “100% cure rate”, you might assume that the four patients with poor clinical outcomes (the three ICU visits and one death) had been unlucky enough to be in the group that did not receive the “cure”.
And yet, those four patients, as well as the patient with nausea and the one who left the hospital early, were all part of the treatment group. They were excluded from the topline results of the study because of the way that the researchers chose to measure and report the results: strictly based on the measurable presence of viruses in nasal swabs taken each day of the study. Since the patients were in the ICU or dead, their samples could not be taken and they were left out of the final analysis. Based on the nasal swabs of just the 36 patients who completed the study, those who received the drug cleared the virus from their systems faster than those who did not.
This is how an experiment in which 15% of the treatment group and 0% of the control had poor clinical outcomes could end up being reported as showing a “100% cure rate”.
On 3 April, two weeks after the study was first published online, the International Society of Antimicrobial Chemotherapy, which publishes the IJAA, said in a statement that the group’s board “believes the article does not meet the Society’s expected standard, especially relating to the lack of better explanations of the inclusion criteria and the triage of patients to ensure patient safety”.
Didier Raoult, the corresponding author for the French study, did not respond to questions from the Guardian.
Andrew Noymer, a professor of public health at the University of California, Irvine, described the results of the French study as “meaningless”. “They should have done an RCT,” he said.
“This idea that we’re all manning the lifeboats and there’s no time for that is just absurd,” Noymer added. “They could have already done it. They could have had the answer by now … Doctors have always gone with their guts and saved many lives, but I don’t know. If they had done RCTs on Thalidomide” – a drug that caused birth defects – “they would have figured out its dangers a lot sooner.”
From Silicon Valley to Fox News So how did one interesting but flawed study out of the south of France make its way to Fox News’s prime time and the White House?
It was not surprising that scientists were interested in testing hydroxychloroquine (and its close relative, chloroquine), a well-known and understood drug, as a potential treatment against Covid-19. It is one of a number of possible treatments that scientists in China and South Korea looked at in the early stages of the coronavirus outbreak, including in vitro (ie lab-based) experiments that showed promising (though not conclusive) results. The drug was also selected as one of four that the World Health Organization included in its large-scale international clinical trial.
But while hydroxychloroquine was garnering some interest in the early days of the pandemic, other possible treatments, such as Gilead’s antiviral Remdesivir, were drawing more. Google trends data shows that people were searching for Remdesivir more than hydroxychloroquine throughout most of February.
What Remdesivir lacked that hydroxychloroquine had, however, was a team of dedicated hype men who appeared more interested in publicizing the drug as a cure than they were in discovering whether the drug was effective.
Among these is Raoult, the French physician who co-authored the hydroxychloroquine study in Marseille. Before Raoult had even begun his clinical trial, in late February, he appeared in the press to promote the idea of chloroquine as a treatment, researchers with First Draft News found. A video of the appearance received more than a quarter-million views on Facebook.
Raoult also found a dedicated and effective English-language publicist in Gregory Rigano, the lawyer who appeared on Fox News with a chyron that falsely labeled him an “adviser” to Stanford medical school. Rigano wrote a Google document promoting the use of chloroquine with James Todaro, a blockchain investor who received a medical degree from Columbia University but does not appear to practice. (The document initially listed a third co-author, a retired biochemist who disclaimed any knowledge of it when contacted by Wired.)
The Google document, which was formatted in a way that made it appear to be a scientific paper, found an audience among Silicon Valley’s elite. It was shared on Twitter by a number of influential investors before it hit the virality motherlode: on 16 March, the billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk tweeted the link to the document to his nearly 33 million followers.
“When someone who is newsworthy or notable that has an enormous network on social media tweets about something that could be as path-breaking as a medicine that could treat coronavirus, everyone is going to pay attention no matter if that person has expertise or not,” said Joan Donovan, director of the technology and social change research project at Harvard’s Shorenstein Center. “Elon Musk elevating and giving voice to this Google doc does act as a validating mechanism. Elon Musk is a tech entrepreneur best known as a car salesman, but nevertheless people look to him for what’s new, what’s next.”
Musk’s tweet received more than 13,000 retweets. (He did not respond to questions from the Guardian about his promotion of the document.) Search interest in chloroquine soared. Mainstream media outlets covered his apparent endorsement of the drug. An 85-year-old medication was well on its way to becoming a Covid-19 meme.
America’s right wing piles on Once Trump declared himself a proponent of hydroxychloroquine, the scientific debate over the drug was drowned out by a decidedly partisan one.
Rightwing media outlets have followed Fox News’s lead (an analysis by Media Matters found that the cable news channel promoted using the drug 109 times between 23 and 25 March) to become staunch proponents of the drug, from digital outrage factories such as the Daily Caller and the Daily Wire to the opinion pages of the Wall Street Journal.
“These drugs are helping our coronavirus patients,” declared the headline of the Journal op-ed, which was written by two physicians from Kansas, Jeff Colyer and Daniel Hinthorn. The pair wrote that they had been treating patients with hydroxychloroquine and azithromycin, and encouraged others to do so too “as a matter of clinical practice” once a patient tests positive. They also recommended using the drug prophylactically for healthcare workers.
The doctors did not provide any data from their own patients, but referenced the French study, writing: “Researchers in France treated a small number of patients with both hydroxychloroquine and a Z-Pak, and 100% of them were cured by day six of treatment.”
Hinthorn, the director of the division of infectious diseases at the University of Kansas medical center, responded to queries from the Guardian about the op-ed’s mischaracterization of the French study: “You are correct. Any patient left out of any analysis makes us suspicious. But what this study told us was that this was a combination that might merit further evaluation.”
He acknowledged that it is unknown whether the drug is beneficial or harmful for Covid-19 patients, but said that since no drug has as yet been proven effective, “if there is any medication that might give hope, we prefer to try it” as long as it is safe. “We should know in the next few weeks whether such a regimen was a wise decision or not.”
Hinthorn did not respond to a follow-up question about whether the op-ed should be corrected to more accurately reflect the degree of uncertainty around hydroxychloroquine. Colyer, the former governor of Kansas and a plastic surgeon, did not respond to requests for comment. He has since written a second op-ed for the Journal, also promoting hydroxychloroquine.
The idea that hydroxychloroquine is “the cure” has taken off within certain online communities, including among anti-vaxxers and followers of QAnon, a rightwing conspiracy theory. The drug has also found support from the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons, a small, ultra-conservative organization that advocates against government involvement in medicine. The group launched a texting campaign to bombard physicians with demands to sign a petition against “red tape” that might prevent them from prescribing the drug, Reuters reported.
Calls for further research Away from the rancor of the partisan media, scientists and physicians continue to study the effects of the drug. In some states, including the hard-hit New York, hospitals are following Hinthorn’s rationale and using the drug since no proven therapy exists.
A group of French researchers published a refutation of the Raoult study in Médecine et Maladies Infectieuses on 30 March. The researchers, at Saint Louis hospital in France, followed the same regimen of hydroxychloroquine for 11 patients, and did not have similar results. “We found no evidence of a strong antiviral activity or clinical benefit of the combination of hydroxychloroquine and azithromycin for the treatment of our hospitalized patients with severe Covid-19,” they wrote. “Ongoing randomized clinical trials with hydroxychloroquine should provide a definitive answer regarding the alleged efficacy of this combination and will assess its safety.”
But another study – this time a randomized controlled trial – out of Wuhan, China, has sparked hope since it was circulated ahead of publication on 31 March. The trial of 62 patients found that patients with mild cases of Covid-19 who were treated with hydroxychloroquine recovered faster than those who did not – and none of them progressed to “severe” illness. The study has not yet been peer-reviewed.
The authors of the study urged further research and large-scale clinical trials to better understand how the drug operates and how best to use it.
The danger of presidential misinformation The hype around hydroxychloroquine has not been without casualties.
Heightened demand for the drug has left longtime patients – including lupus patients who have long used it as an anti-inflammatory – forced to go without. Overdoses have also been reported in the US and Nigeria as frightened individuals attempt to self-medicate.
Social media companies, who have been proactive about policing misinformation about coronavirus, have taken some steps to counter the spread of false claims. Google took down the Google document by Rigano , though the company has not responded to numerous requests for an explanation. Twitter has also deleted tweets by the Brazilian president, Jair Bolsonaro, Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani, and the Fox News personality Laura Ingraham that touted the efficacy of hydroxychloroquine.
But it’s hard to see how these small enforcement actions by internet platforms can have much of an impact when the president of the United States continues to use his platform to promote the drug, as he did during his daily briefings on Saturday and again on Sunday.
Trump’s promotion of the drug has raised questions about his motivation, and on Monday the New York Times reported that the president holds “a small personal financial interest” in Sanofi, the company that makes a brandname version of hydroxychloroquine. (The drug’s patent has expired so other pharmaceutical companies can manufacture generic versions.)
As a piece of viral misinformation, the hydroxychloroquine meme has amassed an extraordinary list of validators, starting with its placement in a respectable peer-reviewed journal. (Though misinformation stemming from academia is not without precedent; the paper that touched off the false belief in a link between autism and the measles vaccine was published in one of the most respected publications in medicine, and only retracted 12 years later.) It’s also very difficult to refute, because none of the hydroxychloroquine narrative’s critics can or will say anything definitive about its efficacy. Uncertainty and a call to await further study is a weak sword to bring to a fight against an overly confident propagandist.
Trump’s unscientific embrace of hydroxychloroquine is not common, but there are historical examples of heads of state spreading misinformation during pandemics. One recent, tragic example is the HIV-denialism of the South African president Thabo Mbeki, who rejected the use of antiretroviral drugs for his country’s citizens and instead promoted nutritional remedies such as beetroot juice and garlic. Researchers at the Harvard school of public health ultimately placed the death toll of Mbeki’s policies at approximately 330,000.
Noymer, the UC Irvine epidemiologist, said that the two situations were not quite analogous, since hydroxychloroquine has a “plausible mechanism” to combat the coronavirus, while beetroot juice never did.
Still, Noymer said that the influence that a president can have over a population’s attitude toward a medicine or drug is significant. He recalled President Gerald Ford publicly receiving a flu shot in 1976, amid fear that a new swine flu could lead to a pandemic.
“There was a photograph of him rolling up a sleeve and getting a shot, and the uptake on the flu shot was enormous,” Noymer said. “When the president of the United States does something, it’s quite the endorsement.”
As for Trump, it does not appear likely that he will stop hyping the drug anytime soon, nor that he will take responsibility if anything goes wrong.
“What do you have to lose?” he said on Sunday. “They say, take it. I’m not looking at it one way or the other … If it does work, it would be a shame if we didn’t do it early. I’ve seen things that I sort of like, so what do I know?
If only hydroxychloroquine could cure Trump Derangement Syndrome
Not every Democrat has COVID-19; but they all – uniformly – apparently suffer from TDS, better known as Trump Derangement Syndrome. Symptoms of this wide-spread affliction include the inability to ever concede, or even imagine, that President Trump might possibly be right about something, sometime.
The most idiotic recent outbreak of this highly communicable disease surrounds the argument over chloroquine and its less toxic derivative hydroxychloroquine. In mid-March, as the coronavirus surged, President Trump mentioned that the latter anti-malaria drug appeared to have “tremendous promise” as a therapy for treating COVID-19 patients. He said it “could be a game-changer, and maybe not,” acknowledging that the jury was still out.
Trump noted that the drug has been available for decades to treat malaria and thus its side-effects are well known. It is also inexpensive and available from numerous suppliers, all of which might recommend it to our pragmatic president.
Trump’s hopeful assertion was widely mocked by the liberal media, who did not welcome the president’s optimism. And yet, the New York Times reported at the time that hospitals across the country were loading up on the drug, responding to reports that in some instances it was saving lives. The Times noted that, “Laboratory studies have found that they prevent the coronavirus from invading cells, suggesting that the drugs could help prevent or limit the infection.”
Reviewing the available literature about the efficacy of the anti-malaria treatments, The Journal of Critical Care on March 10 described chloroquine as “widely used, safe and cheap, [and] effective in viral infections in pre-clinical studies.”
The Journal included reports from Chinese trials finding “Chloroquine phosphate… had demonstrated marked efficacy and acceptable safety in treating COVID-19 associated pneumonia in multicentre clinical trials conducted in China.” Further, both the Dutch and Italian equivalents of the CDC have suggested using chloroquine to treat severe infections requiring admission to the hospital and oxygen therapy.
So, it wasn’t as though Trump was making it up; there were indeed indications that the drugs might help. Why, then, the blow-back?
First, our health agencies are extremely cautious, and ponderous. One of the reasons our coronavirus testing was so chaotic and insufficient was that the FDA delayed granting “emergency use authorization” for making the tests and then the CDC insisted on controlling the manufacture of the kits, all of which prolonged the process.
Caution is, of course, a good thing when prescribing drugs or promising cures. But as thousands are dying from a plague that has no known remedy, maybe it is worth fast-tracking studies and approvals, and allowing people and doctors the chance to experiment with a drug that is widely known and considered safe for most people.
Dr. Anthony Fauci, a senior member of the White House task force and a respected epidemiologist, has cautioned that hydroxychloroquine may not be a “knockout drug,” adding that “We still need to do the definitive studies to determine whether any intervention, not just this one, is truly safe and effective.”
He is right, of course, which is why President Trump has pushed the FDA to accelerate its testing of the therapy; in both New York State and Detroit, large-scale clinical trials are getting underway.
Meanwhile, the press has had a field day, portraying Trump’s optimism about the drugs as reckless, ill-informed and even self-serving. The Times in mid-March ran with this headline: “With Minimal Evidence, Trump Asks F.D.A. to Study Malaria Drugs for Coronavirus,” even as in that article it noted that “Doctors in China, South Korea and France have reported that the treatments seem to help.”
The reporters are worried that there have not been “the kind of large, carefully controlled studies that would…[prove] these drugs work on a significant scale.” Right, but such a trial in the midst of a global pandemic could be viewed as a luxury we don’t have.
More recently, scolds at the Times described Trump’s optimism as “a striking example of his brazen willingness to distort and outright defy expert opinion and scientific evidence.” They also dismissed “A small trial by Chinese researchers” because it had not been “peer reviewed” and reports of the drug’s usefulness from China and France because outcomes had not been compared with those of a control group.
Unrepentant, the president has continued to mention hydroxychloroquine, possibly encouraged by more anecdotal evidence of its effectiveness and also real-life examples of people who say their lives have been saved by the drug. A Democratic state representative from Detroit credits her recent recovery from the virus to her use of the anti-malarial drug in combination with antibiotics, and thanked the president for making public the possible benefits of hydroxychloroquine.
Recently, too, the American Thoracic Society, a group specializing in treating respiratory diseases, issued guidelines endorsing hydroxychloroquine for seriously ill COVID-19 patients with pneumonia.
None of that has swayed the media. It’s almost as though Trump’s critics don’t want hydroxychloroquine to work. It is almost as though they hope this pandemic rolls endlessly forward, depressing the economy and undermining President Trump’s chances of being reelected.
MSNBC’s Mika Brzezinski hit a new TDS low, even for her, when she speculated that perhaps President Trump had a “financial tie” to the drug. Mika thinks the president may be touting the drug for personal gain.
Perhaps the cynical talking head doesn’t understand how high the stakes are for this president, and for the world. President Trump is hoping, praying, that we can find a cure and save lives, bring the economy back to life and get the public back to work.
I'll give you credit for trying to use some science to refute the points in the article on the largest study to date, but your article still doesn't address the baked science behind hydoxychloroquine.
I'm all for clinical trials. What I'm not all for is touting some "cure" that doesn't even exist or has shown little to no efficacy. You should be careful what you believe.
I don't know why Trump is pushing the cocaine or ritalin he snorts. He's been exposed numerous times and avoided testing positive while others around him did.
Now, knowing you, you'll cite the source and say it's fake.
It does, however, appear to be helping. Imagine you, yourself, laying in a hospital room, getting worse and worse. And the doc says "we can do hydroxychlorquine and zinc, which some are reporting has worked and even with in 12 hours but the dems haven't given their approval, OR, we can intubate you, put you on a ventilator that we actually now think could possibly cause more damage."
What do you "choose", as it really wouldn't be your choice.
Anecdotal evidence in a time of crisis is exactly that. It is evidence, good bad or indifferent.
You cannot do a controlled study in a time of crisis that would be defensible from a clinical research prospective. There is no time, people are dying.
You go with what you have, or what you think is best. Hopefully there is no harm.
The alternative is a higher probability of death.
I think the statement of 100 percent cure is total horse hockey. That does not exist. I think the hype and dismissals are both counterproductive.
It should be viewed as a temporary strategy, until the results of a clinical trial become available.
I think the hype and dismissals are both counterproductive.
Totally agree with this. There are enough people out there that feel it helped them that I'd be willing to give it a try if I came down with the virus. I wouldn't rely on uninformed politicians and pundits with an axe to grind telling me whether or not to take it. It's just as bad from both directions.
Anecdotal evidence in a time of crisis is exactly that. It is evidence, good bad or indifferent.
You cannot do a controlled study in a time of crisis that would be defensible from a clinical research prospective. There is no time, people are dying.
You go with what you have, or what you think is best. Hopefully there is no harm.
The alternative is a higher probability of death.
I think the statement of 100 percent cure is total horse hockey. That does not exist. I think the hype and dismissals are both counterproductive.
It should be viewed as a temporary strategy, until the results of a clinical trial become available.
They say Mr. President killed people out one side of their mouths and then bash him for trying things to save peoples lives out the other side of their mouths ...
When your dying ... anecdotal smanecdotal ... lets give it a whirl ... witch would be the same thing the hypocrites would say if it was them or a loved one ...
It must really irk you guys that Hydroxychloroquine is saving lives.
Shame!
There is actually precious little evidence, anywhere, to support this viewpoint, and what there is of it is merely anecdotal and nothing where the results can be definitely tied to the use of hydroxychloroquine.
THAT is the actual problem with hydroxychloroquine.
Not only is there nothing more than anecdotal evidence at this point that it saves lives, there is absolutely ZERO evidence - NOTHING - to support any notion that it prevents cases from advancing to the severe/critical care stage, which is precisely what any treatment for COVID-19 absolutely MUST do for it to be of any value whatsoever.
The entire issue has nothing at all to do with Trump except that people are hung up on him wanting it to be tried and fast-tracked. It has everything to do with the fact that the French "study" was bogus and used a craptastic measurement of "not dead" as its determiner of success.
I'm all for us getting things to clinical trials, and I'm all for trying hydroxychloroquine and even Viagra like the Chinese did, but the odd fanaticism that has sprung up around this drug is just mind-boggling. It has proven nothing, yet people are shouting for everyone to use it. Well, my buddy is on it and has been since March 31, and he still ended up in the ICU where he still is.
Call me old fashion, but I’ll take the word of an actual doctor of medicine over the WH spin doctors.
You posted this at 2:55. At 3:15 I posted 3 sources, with doctors. It is now 4:18, yet no reply?
I can imagine you laying in a hospital room, close to death, and you saying "No, don't treat me with that unproven drug that has helped others, because Trump mentioned it."
Do I blame anyone for throwing stuff against the wall and praying it works? Nope. Do I think it should be hyped beyond what it has been demonstrated to accomplish? No.
As for anecdotal evidence? Hmmm - anyone ever hear of the Placebo Effect? Could easily be nothing more than that ... and to be honest if that is all it is, it's still worth administering. But let's be factual and candid with that and not imply that it might be the answer we've been looking for ... I am pretty sure if the affect was that positive, we would have verified and seen it all across the world.
If you read the article, a French doctor states it was a 100% cure. Elon Musk hopped on that bandwagon as well.
The French doctor, who purposefully excluded certain cases that weren’t responding, had a guy who started promoting this drug. It then made the rounds.
Now we’re talking about this drug as some magical cure that the evil FDA is limiting because “regulations are bad cause Ronald Reagan told me so” nonsense.
Trying things is fine, but spewing anti-science rhetoric is dangerous and can kill people.
Odd ... cause that’s not what Cuomo said on tv this week ... he said it helped a lot of people ... i have no clue but that’s what the man said ... and I’ve heard plenty of doctors say it helps ...
U can ask 50 docs and get 50 slightly different opinions on it ...
FACTS are very elusive on many different issues with this virus including potential drugs that may alleviate the symptoms ...
There’s questions about the malaria drug that helps coved patients ... the governor in Mich refused it at first and is now allowing it ... Cuomo still won’t allow it ...
Way to many unknowns here ... I’m surprised your taking such a hard line stance when so many things are still unknown about the disease and drugs used to offset it ...
I think the hype and dismissals are both counterproductive.
Totally agree with this. There are enough people out there that feel it helped them that I'd be willing to give it a try if I came down with the virus. I wouldn't rely on uninformed politicians and pundits with an axe to grind telling me whether or not to take it. It's just as bad from both directions.
Fauci is taking the classical "it has not been demonstrated in a peer review study and published in a scientific journal approach" His approach is technically correct and what I would expect him to say.
The reality is that someone made an observation, tried it, observed some benefit, and has spread the word that it may be a therapeutic drug to help fight the disease.
Other have hyped it or dismissed it. And created a mess.
That should not stop others from performing a better evaluation.
But if you are a Doctor on the front line having to deal with individual who are in your care, you are probably going to dig into the information a bit more to see if it would help those most in need.
I see both sides on this subject. I will also say that I know what it is like to get a peer reviewed paper published. So I am very sensitive about time, as this can be a long involved process.
They say Mr. President killed people out one side of their mouths and then bash him for trying things to save peoples lives out the other side of their mouths ...
When your dying ... anecdotal smanecdotal ... lets give it a whirl ... witch would be the same thing the hypocrites would say if it was them or a loved one ...
Hey, try keeping my name out of your mouth. Anybody that took advice from you would have to be a moron.
You are full of BS.....Allow what? You’re saying doctors are not allowed to prescribe Hydroxychloroquine to their patients? Pure BS..... pffft the trump era.
It must really irk you guys that Hydroxychloroquine is saving lives.
Shame!
There is actually precious little evidence, anywhere, to support this viewpoint, and what there is of it is merely anecdotal and nothing where the results can be definitely tied to the use of hydroxychloroquine.
THAT is the actual problem with hydroxychloroquine.
Not only is there nothing more than anecdotal evidence at this point that it saves lives, there is absolutely ZERO evidence - NOTHING - to support any notion that it prevents cases from advancing to the severe/critical care stage, which is precisely what any treatment for COVID-19 absolutely MUST do for it to be of any value whatsoever.
The entire issue has nothing at all to do with Trump except that people are hung up on him wanting it to be tried and fast-tracked. It has everything to do with the fact that the French "study" was bogus and used a craptastic measurement of "not dead" as its determiner of success.
I'm all for us getting things to clinical trials, and I'm all for trying hydroxychloroquine and even Viagra like the Chinese did, but the odd fanaticism that has sprung up around this drug is just mind-boggling. It has proven nothing, yet people are shouting for everyone to use it. Well, my buddy is on it and has been since March 31, and he still ended up in the ICU where he still is.
I'm not happy he's making money on it and pushing it.
They say Mr. President killed people out one side of their mouths and then bash him for trying things to save peoples lives out the other side of their mouths ...
When your dying ... anecdotal smanecdotal ... lets give it a whirl ... witch would be the same thing the hypocrites would say if it was them or a loved one ...
Hey, try keeping my name out of your mouth. Anybody that took advice from you would have to be a moron.
How is he making money on it? He has a small investment in a mutual fund that has some money invested in a commpany that makes it. I have a small investment in a mutual fund/funds that probably has money invested in things I don't even know about. Bet you do too, as well as any union, etc.
Information for Clinicians on Therapeutic Options for Patients with COVID-19 Updated April 7, 2020
There are no drugs or other therapeutics approved by the US Food and Drug Administration to prevent or treat COVID-19. Current clinical management includes infection prevention and control measures and supportive care, including supplemental oxygen and mechanical ventilatory support when indicated. Interim guidelines for the medical management of COVID-19 will be provided soon by the Department of Health and Human Services COVID-19 Treatment Guidelines Panel.
Remdesivir Remdesivir is an investigational intravenous drug with broad antiviral activity that inhibits viral replication through premature termination of RNA transcription and has in-vitro activity against SARS-CoV-2 and in-vitro and in-vivo activity against related betacoronaviruses. Information about clinical trials of remdesivir is available at ClinicalTrials.govexternal icon. Remdesivir is also available through an expanded access programexternal icon from the manufacturer, Gilead Sciences.
Hydroxychloroquine and chloroquine Hydroxychloroquine and chloroquine are oral prescription drugs that have been used for treatment of malaria and certain inflammatory conditions. Hydroxychloroquine and chloroquine are under investigation in clinical trials for pre-exposure or post-exposure prophylaxis of SARS-CoV-2 infection, and treatment of patients with mild, moderate, and severe COVID-19. More information on clinical trials can be found at ClinicalTrials.govexternal icon. FDA issued an Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) to authorize use of chloroquine and hydroxychloroquineexternal icon from the Strategic National Stockpile for treatment of hospitalized adults and adolescents (weight ≥50 kg) with COVID-19 for whom a clinical trial is not available or participation is not feasible.
Other Drugs Several other drugs (e.g., investigational antivirals, immunotherapeutic, host-directed therapies) are under investigation in clinical trials or are being considered for clinical trials of pre-exposure prophylaxis, post-exposure prophylaxis, or treatment of COVID-19 in the United States and worldwide. Information on registered clinical trials for COVID-19 in the United States is available at ClinicalTrials.govexternal icon. FDA has issued guidance for administering or studying use of convalescent plasma for treatmentexternal icon of patients with COVID-19.
The primary purpose of a doctor in a time of crisis is to save the life that is in front of them.
They are not in a double blind random clinical trial.
If a Doctor sees it, uses the drug and sees a benefit, they are probably going to use it again, without a double blind random clinical trial, simply because they would not be following their primary purpose.
It is how stuff happens, good and bad, there are risks and rewards.
Anedotal information has value.
People that participate in those trials have to give their consent, and may not want to do so, fearing that they would be part of the control (placebo) group.
Lots of crazy things happen when lots of people are dying very fast.
Although I do believe that if more evidence shows those receiving the drug show more promise, those in the control are immediately given the drug being tested, right?
So they may start off on the control, but they could potentially be put on the drug that is improving conditions?
There are times I really question the anti Trumpers, because they are anti anything he does or says. Sadly for them, he's been ahead of them, which I know ticks them off.
They've been after him since even before day 1, and they've been prove wrong over and over and over.
This drug isn't something you just go out and buy. It's a prescription drug, meaning a doctor needs to prescribe it. And, more and more, doctors are, and more and more, it's working. Perfectly? No. Most that die from covid had underlying health issues, like the 1 day old baby in Louisianna, that was listed as a casualty of covid.........and we learn her mom had the virus, but the baby was born prematurely at week 22 of gestation. Yet, the baby was considered a 'death by covid" victim.
Hundreds of examples, yet one side cares not about facts - just attacking the president on anything. Including what doctors are now saying is/might be working.
I think there's a few on here that don't care about the helping part, they care only about attacking the president. Sad ass people.
Technically, that would violate the protocol and invalidate the study.
But it could happen.
No, there are clear medical ethics rules about this. If you are getting back statistically significant results (how statistically significant is always debatable) that the therapy is better than the control group, you are obligated to end the experiment immediately and treat the control group using the therapy.
And as several posters have made clear, there is nothing prohibiting doctors from treating patients with hydroxychloroquinine right now. It is possible it helps -- but some of the evidence is dubious (which is going to be true of any therapy at such an early stage), it also has some significant side effects (long term hearing damage among them).
The danger with Trump is claiming this as a miracle cure, rather than a possible treatment that should continue to be investigated. Additionally, Trump seems to be furthering the lore that "the experts are lying to you", which is especially dangerous during a pandemic. It's a failure of leadership, at a time when we need to give trust (and resources) to experts.
Anecdotal evidence in a time of crisis is exactly that. It is evidence, good bad or indifferent.
You cannot do a controlled study in a time of crisis that would be defensible from a clinical research prospective. There is no time, people are dying.
You go with what you have, or what you think is best. Hopefully there is no harm.
The alternative is a higher probability of death.
I think the statement of 100 percent cure is total horse hockey. That does not exist. I think the hype and dismissals are both counterproductive.
It should be viewed as a temporary strategy, until the results of a clinical trial become available.
How is he making money on it? He has a small investment in a mutual fund that has some money invested in a commpany that makes it. I have a small investment in a mutual fund/funds that probably has money invested in things I don't even know about. Bet you do too, as well as any union, etc.
Arch, are you citing the Breitbart story that used Michael Cernovich as the source providing Trump's investment in the drug companies and mutual funds or did you see the information elsewhere?
Michael Cernovich is an alt-right conspriacy theorist. He's basically Alex Jones. He's the one who made up pizza gate scandal.
He just makes things up to get a rise out of people.
How is he making money on it? He has a small investment in a mutual fund that has some money invested in a commpany that makes it. I have a small investment in a mutual fund/funds that probably has money invested in things I don't even know about. Bet you do too, as well as any union, etc.
Arch, are you citing the Breitbart story that used Michael Cernovich as the source providing Trump's investment in the drug companies and mutual funds or did you see the information elsewhere?
Michael Cernovich is an alt-right conspriacy theorist. He's basically Alex Jones. He's the one who made up pizza gate scandal.
He just makes things up to get a rise out of people.
I don't know if I'm citing him. What I AM citing is even the msm has said "he has a small personal interest through a mutual fund...." Now, maybe trump pays a lot more attention to exactly what his mutual funds are invested in than I do. But come on, it's a mutual fund.
Oh, by the way, have you heard? Even the cdc is saying their might be something to the hydrochlori....however you spell it.
Cuomo won’t allow the malaria drug ... at least as of yesterday ...
NORTHWELL HEALTH, NEW YORK: The 23-hospital healthcare system began in late March to use hydroxychloroquine routinely in patients admitted with the sometimes deadly respiratory illness caused by the virus, according to Dr. Kevin Tracey, chief executive of Northwell’s research arm. This was based on preliminary data that “it may be beneficial,” said Chief Pharmacy Officer Onisis Stefas. Hydroxychloroquine is given to patients who have “really no other options,” and have not qualified for clinical trials of other potential coronavirus treatments, he said. Northwell also allows doctors to prescribe it in conjunction with the antibiotic azithromycin on a case by case basis, but that is not standard of care. NYU LANGONE HEALTH, NEW YORK: NYU has been giving the drug to patients since early March, according to Dr. Michael Belmont, a rheumatologist. Some doctors at NYU are also prescribing azithromycin in combination with hydroxychloroquine, although Belmont said the medical literature he has seen is “insufficient to draw an inference that the combination is especially effective.”
Lastly, don't believe everything you read on Facebook which is where the nonsense started that Michigan and New York governors were banning the use hydroxychloroqine. People don't really believe Governors have the ability to restrict physicians on how they can treat patients, do they?
The danger with Trump is claiming this as a miracle cure, rather than a possible treatment that should continue to be investigated. Additionally, Trump seems to be furthering the lore that "the experts are lying to you", which is especially dangerous during a pandemic. It's a failure of leadership, at a time when we need to give trust (and resources) to experts.
I've stopped listening to him altogether. I tune in daily to Gov. DeWine and Dr. Acton. I read material from the CDC, AMA and other professionals.
After Day Two of his press conferences, I put his ass on the curb, stomped on the accelerator, and never once glanced into my rear-view mirror.
This is a time for serious people with credentials, brains, and professional expertise. I'm not wasting even one moment of my life listening to a C-List TV "celebrity" lie to me.
Technically, that would violate the protocol and invalidate the study.
But it could happen.
No, there are clear medical ethics rules about this. If you are getting back statistically significant results (how statistically significant is always debatable) that the therapy is better than the control group, you are obligated to end the experiment immediately and treat the control group using the therapy.
I agree that that is what is supposed to happen, but the net result would be the same. The study would be abandoned. Some would counter that a greater good would be obtained by continuation completion of testing. Ethics are not easy, especially when lives are in the balance.
That is why I indicated that you cannot do this type of study under the circumstances of the coronavirus where death is an imminent threat. The study cannot be completed if the results are positive.
We know what how statistics are used from football (aka statistics are for losers). That is the purpose of peer review. The investigator extracts or structures the data in a misleading way in order to present the desired outcome.
I swear by zinc for early treatment on colds and flus. Knowing that I could see why they are seeing some improvement rather the other meds work or not.
You know why you don't like listening to the press conferences? Because the press can't control the narrative.
I hope you're not listening to the WHO. That organization is a disgrace and the director is in bed with the Chinese government. SO SO glad we quit funding them. They are dirty as the day is long. So dirty.
We know what how statistics are used from football (aka statistics are for losers). That is the purpose of peer review. The investigator extracts or structures the data in a misleading way in order to present the desired outcome.
The lesson that you have gotten out of the last two months is that science and statistics are for losers?
You know why you don't like listening to the press conferences? Because the press can't control the narrative.
I hope you're not listening to the WHO. That organization is a disgrace and the director is in bed with the Chinese government. SO SO glad we quit funding them. They are dirty as the day is long. So dirty.
Now there reports that Trump owns stock in the company that owns this med.
No. He has shares in a mutual fund, and that mutual fund has apparently invested into one of the companies that make it.
Hydroxychloroquine is the generic medication. ANY company can make it.
The non-generic is Plaquenil and it is manufactured by the French pharmaceutical company Sanofi-Aventis (which likely explains the original source in France with the craptacular study results).
Anecdotal evidence in a time of crisis is exactly that. It is evidence, good bad or indifferent.
You cannot do a controlled study in a time of crisis that would be defensible from a clinical research prospective. There is no time, people are dying.
You go with what you have, or what you think is best. Hopefully there is no harm.
The alternative is a higher probability of death.
I think the statement of 100 percent cure is total horse hockey. That does not exist. I think the hype and dismissals are both counterproductive.
It should be viewed as a temporary strategy, until the results of a clinical trial become available.
I agree with this, in addition I would point out that they were predicting 100k-200k deaths. Yesterday we were at 14k and had 1,400 deaths, we would have to sustain 1,400 deaths for two more FULL MONTHS to get to the low end of the estimate.
So, the anecdotal evidence supports that this drug may help in addition to us not even being close to the death totals Dr. Fauci stated we would see.
ORANGE MAN BAD though.
I am just disgusted by the absolute partisanship in a time of crisis. (that in no way is directed at you charger)
The number of deaths doesn't support it at all, actually... and the simple fact that I can say that with conviction while someone could argue the counter with conviction and we'd both feel we are right is precisely the problem with anecdotal evidence.
Give me data.
Give me information that says we had a group of 50 males, aged 17-55, all presenting with a similar symptom set, and no underlying health issues.... half were given the hydroxychloroquine, zinc, azithromycin treatment and the other half (Control) received placebo. Following 'x' number of treatments, we had 'n'-more recoveries and 'y' fewer advancements to severe/critical than in the Control group.
Give me THAT kind of information... because without it, you really are just guessing. You aren't really even throwing crap against a wall to see if it sticks; you're just throwing crap. You can't know if people are recovering because they just had a mild case or if it is because of the medications.... and knowing that you have a medication that works is the entire point.
Exactly ... and while throwing crap might still be ok at this point. If you are very sick who wouldn't want to try anything that 'night' help ...
But there needs to be proper studies conducted even if on the smallest of sample sizes. If the study and document 20 patients in 10 different locations around the globe and they see a pattern then we might have something. But without this being done we really have no clue.
Cuomo won’t allow the malaria drug ... at least as of yesterday ...
BS show me a link that proves Cuomo can stop a doctor from prescribing this drug to their coronavirus patients? Until then I’ll stick with my original statement.....You are full of BS.
Since we currently have nothing in terms of treatments, you gotta try whatever you can get your hands on that you think might help.
Zinc has been shown to help stop viral propagation? cool, use it. Hydroxychloroquine helps the body absorb zinc and may help suppress the cytokine storm in late stage COVID-19? Great, give it out and see what happens? Worried that the immunosuppressing effect of the hydroxychloroquine may leave the patient open to infections? Groovy... give them an antibiotic like azithromycin
BUT, all that data on every patient, every dose, every side effect, every outcome... it should all be getting collated in a single place. If we have states or hospitals not using that regimen, and we have plenty that are.... there's a data set to study. We can't just do what that French doctor did (or the guy in LA) and say "I gave this to a bunch of people, and the ones I counted didn't die... we should ALL USE THIS!" It doesn't work like that.
One big problem with it, though, is that apparently one of the largest manufacturing areas for hydroxychloroquine is India. Which is shut down like everywhere else.
Additionally, until two days ago, India had decided that they were not going to export any more. Trump then hinted that if they didn't start exporting it there may be retaliatory measures and on the 7th of April they did a u-turn on the stance toward exporting it.
They are now ramping up production, but it will take some time. Until then, the world supply isn't exactly robust.
One big problem with it, though, is that apparently one of the largest manufacturing areas for hydroxychloroquine is India. Which is shut down like everywhere else.
Additionally, until two days ago, India had decided that they were not going to export any more. Trump then hinted that if they didn't start exporting it there may be retaliatory measures and on the 7th of April they did a u-turn on the stance toward exporting it.
They are now ramping up production, but it will take some time. Until then, the world supply isn't exactly robust.
Anyone else think this is ironic? One day Trump demands GM stop distributing N95 (?) outside of the USA. The next he's threatening other nations that copy his lead?
He cannot stop them. It is an existing approved medication; any doctor can prescribe it for anything.
A governor that doesn't know diddly about medicine cannot - and should not have the power to - tell doctors they cannot use something.
We agree. And considering the governor of New York never said he isn’t going to allow the drug to be used if prescribed proves he doesn’t know diddly about medicine. He’s smart enough to leave that up to the doctors and experts. Unlike the disfunction junction bunch in the WH that are playing politics and can’t even support our front line hero’s in this war who are pretty much on their own and dying by the thousands. Pffft trump
Now there reports that Trump owns stock in the company that owns this med.
No. He has shares in a mutual fund, and that mutual fund has apparently invested into one of the companies that make it.
Hydroxychloroquine is the generic medication. ANY company can make it.
The non-generic is Plaquenil and it is manufactured by the French pharmaceutical company Sanofi-Aventis (which likely explains the original source in France with the craptacular study results).
Are you aware where the info you posted originated?
They are currently running tests on Hydro and there are testimonials of people being saved by the drug.
Don't like it? Then just delete it, again.
The testimonials are "I didn't die". The fact is over 95% of Covid 19 patients don't die.
AHA, ACC, HRS Caution Use of COVID-19 Therapies Hydroxychloroquine and Azithromycin in Cardiac Patients
New COVID-19 drug therapy guidance from the American Heart Association, the American College of Cardiology and the Heart Rhythm Society
April 8, 2020 – The scientific community is learning more about the impact and interaction of cardiovascular diseases with novel coronavirus (COVID-19, SARS-CoV-2), including the impact of drug therapies being used and their negative cardiovascular impact. Together, the American Heart Association (AHA), the American College of Cardiology (ACC) and the Heart Rhythm Society (HRS) April 8 jointly published a new guidance, “Considerations for Drug Interactions on QTc in Exploratory COVID-19 (Coronavirus Disease 19) Treatment,” to detail critical cardiovascular considerations in the use of hydroxychloroquine and azithromycin for the treatment of COVID-19.[1]
This guidance is published in Circulation, the journal of the American Heart Association, the Journal of the American College of Cardiology (JACC), and Heart Rhythm Journal, the official journal of the HRS.
Hydroxychloroquine and Azithromycin Pose Serious Health Risks
The antimalarial medication hydroxychloroquine and the antibiotic azithromycin are currently gaining attention as potential treatments for COVID-19, and each have potential serious implications for people with existing cardiovascular disease. Complications include severe electrical irregularities in the heart such as arrythmia (irregular heartbeat), polymorphic ventricular tachycardia (including Torsade de Pointes) and long QT syndrome, and increased risk of sudden death. The effect on QT or arrhythmia of these two medications combined has not been studied.
The AHA, the ACC and the HRS guidance for health care professionals includes additional mechanisms to reduce the risk of arrhythmias. Steps outlined: • Electrocardiographic/QT interval monitoring; • Withhold hydroxychloroquine and azithromycin in patients with baseline QT prolongation (e.g. QTc ≥500 msec) or with known congenital long QT syndrome; • Monitor cardiac rhythm and QT interval; withdrawal of hydroxychloroquine and azithromycin if QTc exceeds a present threshold of 500 msec; • In patients critically ill with COVID-19 infection, frequent caregiver contact may need to be minimized, so optimal electrocardiographic interval and rhythm monitoring may not be possible; • Correction of hypokalemia >4mEq/L and hypomagnesemia >2mg/dL; and • Avoid other QTc prolonging agents whenever feasible.
The statement also includes a table rating potential adverse cardiac events of medications currently being repurposed for COVID-19 treatment, such as chloroquine and lopinavir/ritonavir (antimalarial and antiviral agents, respectively).
“The urgency of COVID-19 must not diminish the scientific rigor with which we approach COVID-19 treatment. While these medications may work against COVID-19 individually or in combination, we recommend caution with these medications for patients with existing cardiovascular disease,” said Robert A. Harrington, M.D., FAHA, president of the American Heart Association, Arthur L. Bloomfield Professor of Medicine and chair of the department of medicine at Stanford University.
“We are united in our mission to achieve optimal, quality care for our patients, and we must continue to be vigilant in assessing the potential complications of all medications during this crisis,“ stated Athena Poppas, M.D., president of the American College of Cardiology, professor of medicine at Brown University and chief of cardiology and director of the Lifespan Cardiovascular Institute at Rhode Island, the Miriam and Newport hospitals in Providence, Rhode Island.
“Given the potential for increased risks related to combinations of medications that prolong the QT interval, we urge careful consideration to ensure patients with cardiovascular disease or others at increased risk can be monitored appropriately,” stated Andrea M. Russo, M.D., president of the Heart Rhythm Society, director of Electrophysiology and Arrhythmia Services at Cooper University Hospital, director of the CCEP Fellowship Program, and professor of medicine at Cooper Medical School of Rowan University in Camden, New Jersey.
The statement is also co-authored by Dan M. Roden, M.D., C.M., interim division chief of cardiovascular medicine, senior vice president for personalized medicine, faculty of the clinical cardiac electrophysiology program, Sam Clark Chair in Experimental Therapeutics, professor of pharmacology and professor of biomedical informatics at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee.
If a Doctor sees it, uses the drug and sees a benefit, they are probably going to use it again, without a double blind random clinical trial, simply because they would not be following their primary purpose.
It is how stuff happens, good and bad, there are risks and rewards.
Anedotal information has value.
People that participate in those trials have to give their consent, and may not want to do so, fearing that they would be part of the control (placebo) group.
Lots of crazy things happen when lots of people are dying very fast.
So let me ask you. if over 95% of people recover from the virus, who is to actually say, based on any "real evidence" that Trump's advocated treatment is the reason they recovered?
What you raise is what many feel about this drug at the moment.
THe majority of mild cases recover on their own. Not much of the existing data shows those who are in a severe and/or critical state are affected by either form of chloroquine.
Too many in this thread got caught up in the "TRUMP GOOD FDA AND LIBERALS BAD BECAUSE REAGAN SAID SO!" rather than look at the actual studies.
The current studies and majority of anecdotal evidence show this still isn't an effective treatment for covid.
Keep testing if you wish, but it's showing this isn't doing much of anything.
And I can count them all. I point out facts and you can't refute them. So this is all you can do. I use sources and data. You just throw crap with nothing to back it up. A true Trumpian.
We know what how statistics are used from football (aka statistics are for losers). That is the purpose of peer review. The investigator extracts or structures the data in a misleading way in order to present the desired outcome.
I feel like a number of people, who like to doubt science, have this weird habit of throwing around "peer review", without really knowing how it works...
Anecdotal evidence in a time of crisis is exactly that. It is evidence, good bad or indifferent.
You cannot do a controlled study in a time of crisis that would be defensible from a clinical research prospective. There is no time, people are dying.
You go with what you have, or what you think is best. Hopefully there is no harm.
The alternative is a higher probability of death.
I think the statement of 100 percent cure is total horse hockey. That does not exist. I think the hype and dismissals are both counterproductive.
It should be viewed as a temporary strategy, until the results of a clinical trial become available.
I agree with this, in addition I would point out that they were predicting 100k-200k deaths. Yesterday we were at 14k and had 1,400 deaths, we would have to sustain 1,400 deaths for two more FULL MONTHS to get to the low end of the estimate.
So, the anecdotal evidence supports that this drug may help in addition to us not even being close to the death totals Dr. Fauci stated we would see.
ORANGE MAN BAD though.
I am just disgusted by the absolute partisanship in a time of crisis. (that in no way is directed at you charger)
Look I'm not putting you down but just pointing out that trying to use the current facts on the ground to calculate the end results while we are still trying to wrap around the severity of this thing is just an excercise in mental masterbation. The data is all over the place right now. We are assuming facts one day and dismissing them the next. I personally think we are going to learn a lesson the hard way because we will return to work in the next few weeks while this thing is still ravaging the country. If that happens, I fear we'll easily meet those high end numbers.
Now there reports that Trump owns stock in the company that owns this med.
Drug has been out of patent for how long? This drug has been around for decades, this is an irrelevant partisan "gotcha" fact.
When I first read the headline that Trump was profiting off this drug I was mad as hell. But after understanding the link, I agree. This is the media making a mountain out of a molehill.
And I can count them all. I point out facts and you can't refute them. So this is all you can do. I use sources and data. You just throw crap with nothing to back it up. A true Trumpian.
If any of you lefties get the virus and get really sick you'll be begging for that drug.
Unlike what you think of me, I'm neither irrational nor unrealistic. I can't stand (as in despise/hate) Trump the President/Person but he has the right to own stock as long as it is managed by others without him using his office to profit. I wouldn't even mind, like in this case, if he did make a little money off of his influence here and there. But his whole presidency is a heist and at some point all the evidence will come to light.
And I can count them all. I point out facts and you can't refute them. So this is all you can do. I use sources and data. You just throw crap with nothing to back it up. A true Trumpian.
If any of you lefties get the virus and get really sick you'll be begging for that drug.
You're probably right, but that doesn't justify the non-medical barely capable of complex thoughts Trump pimping it willy nilly.
And I can count them all. I point out facts and you can't refute them. So this is all you can do. I use sources and data. You just throw crap with nothing to back it up. A true Trumpian.
If any of you lefties get the virus and get really sick you'll be begging for that drug.
lol........trump is the one begging for it. Get over yourself.
And I can count them all. I point out facts and you can't refute them. So this is all you can do. I use sources and data. You just throw crap with nothing to back it up. A true Trumpian.
If any of you lefties get the virus and get really sick you'll be begging for that drug.
As of this moment, taking a B Complex shot and an aspirin may be just as helpful.
I'm not sure what people don't get about the fact that over 96% of people that get the virus live. So the fact that people recover after taking these drugs pretty much means nothing.
Former FDA leaders decry emergency authorization of malaria drugs for coronavirus.
Most of this hydroxychloroquine hysteria is what you get when people who aren't familiar with the medical field try to weigh in on things like this.
Docs can use (and have used) drugs/devices off-label. That's why this whole thing came up, really. So if the doc thinks it will help, he'll write the 'script. Using that as reason to push forward a new indication that only has shoddy data behind it undermines many of the safeguards that people rely on.
And I can count them all. I point out facts and you can't refute them. So this is all you can do. I use sources and data. You just throw crap with nothing to back it up. A true Trumpian.
If any of you lefties get the virus and get really sick you'll be begging for that drug.
As of this moment, taking a B Complex shot and an aspirin may be just as helpful.
I'm not sure what people don't get about the fact that over 96% of people that get the virus live. So the fact that people recover after taking these drugs pretty much means nothing.
Former FDA leaders decry emergency authorization of malaria drugs for coronavirus.
I don't get your point that 96 percent live... The disease has a 1 in 25 chance of killing you, and if you are over 70, the odds are much worse.
No, you go from a nominal chance, to playing Russian roulette with your life.
I have to shake my head, a week ago or so, the mortality rate was less than 1.5 percent, now it is 4 percent, and that seems ok? It is a very deadly disease.
We know what how statistics are used from football (aka statistics are for losers). That is the purpose of peer review. The investigator extracts or structures the data in a misleading way in order to present the desired outcome.
I feel like a number of people, who like to doubt science, have this weird habit of throwing around "peer review", without really knowing how it works...
I don't know were your going with this, but as a matter of fact, I have had peer reviewed papers published in scientific journals. I have been through the process.
The last paper involved the removal of MS-2 coliphage (a bacterial virus) through reverse osmosis systems.
My point was that just because you survived the disease doesn't mean it was due to Hydroxychloroquine. The survival rate is high enough that you can't really attribute survival to that. Fauci has said the same thing. That it's anecdotal.
My point was that just because you survived the disease doesn't mean it was due to Hydroxychloroquine. The survival rate is high enough that you can't really attribute survival to that. Fauci has said the same thing. That it's anecdotal.
The is heightened by the use of small data sets and having your criteria being simply "didn't die".
Taking a disease where the overwhelming majority of patients not only survive but don't have anything more than mild symptoms and then saying "I gave them this medication and nobody died" doesn't really give anyone anything useful, at all. Especially when your control group also didn't have anyone die.
You need results that are statistically significant.
My point was that just because you survived the disease doesn't mean it was due to Hydroxychloroquine. The survival rate is high enough that you can't really attribute survival to that. Fauci has said the same thing. That it's anecdotal.
I get that, and the article points out the issues, the data sets by which some one started saying 100 percent cure appeared to be a subset, or structured in a way to provide overly optimistic result.
But, and as an example, if the use would reduce the death rate from 4 percent to 2 percent, that would be a very relevant finding. Is is a big difference between 96 and 98 no, Is there a big difference between 4 and 2, yes.
A lot of findings begin with anecdotal evidence, there is nothing wrong with that.
And this is why you are careful to study the medicine as much as possible before declaring its efficacy.
French officials report heart incidents in experimental coronavirus treatments with hydroxychloroquine
France reported dozens of heart incidents linked to an anti-malaria drug President Trump has hyped as a possible treatment for the coronavirus.
Data released by France’s drug safety agency showed 43 cases of heart incidents linked to hydroxychloroquine, underscoring the risk of providing unproven treatments to COVID-19 patients.
“This initial assessment shows that the risks, in particular cardiovascular, associated with these treatments are very present and potentially increased in COVID-19 patients. Almost all of the declarations come from health establishments,” the agency said. “These drugs should only be used in hospitals, under close medical supervision.”
France has recorded 100 health incidents and four fatalities linked to experimental drugs for those with the coronavirus since late March. Three other patients had to be revived, and 82 incidents were considered “serious.”
The incidents were roughly evenly split between hydroxychloroquine and HIV antivirals lopinavir-ritonavir.
The report comes as Trump repeatedly touts hydroxychloroquine as a possible coronavirus treatment, calling the drug a possible “game changer.”
However, health officials have expressed concerns over the drug, saying there’s no strong evidence it can be used for COVID-19.
“We’ve got to be careful that we don’t make that majestic leap to assume that this is a knockout drug. We still need to do the kinds of studies that definitely prove whether any intervention is truly safe and effective,” Anthony Fauci, the nation’s leading infectious disease expert, said this week. “We don’t operate on how you feel, we operate on what evidence and data is.”
An antimalarial drug touted as a potential treatment for coronavirus might have no benefit to patients at all, according to a new study by French scientists.
Researchers compared more than 180 patients – some receiving hydroxychloroquine treatment and others who were not treated with the drug – and found their outcomes were almost identical. The research by doctors and scientists from 12 hospitals and public research institutes across France, is the most comprehensive study so far of the performance of the controversial drug in hospitals and involves the most Covid-19 patients.
“These results do not support the use of hydroxychloroquine in patients hospitalised for documented Sars-CoV-2-positive hypoxic pneumonia,” the authors said in a non-peer reviewed paper released by medRxiv.org on Tuesday.
Hydroxychloroquine was invented in 1945. It is a chemical compound derived from chloroquine, a drug used by troops to combat malaria in the Pacific jungles during World War II, with similar effect.
Early this year, soon after the first strain of the new coronavirus was isolated, Chinese scientists used a supercomputer to screen for potential drugs. They found chloroquine and its derivatives had a chemical structure that could interact with the virus.
Preliminary laboratory experiments suggested this family of drugs could suppress viral replication in the test tube, though it remained far from clear what effect it would have on the human body. US President Donald Trump was the first – and the only – world leader promoting the drug as a hopeful cure for Covid-19 to the general public. The US Food and Drug Administration last month granted an emergency approval that allowed American hospitals to use chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine on Covid-19 patients without clinical trials.
An uncontrolled study by a research team in Marseille, France, involving 26 patients found 100 per cent viral clearance in nose swabs in six patients treated by a combination of hydroxychloroquine and antibiotics, raising hope for the drug.
In a study from Wuhan, China, on 62 patients, researchers also found “significant improvement” on the general outcome. These results, however, were not replicated in follow-up research involving 11 patients in Paris.
So a French team, led by Matthieu Mahevas of the University of Paris-Est, decided to investigate what happened in a “real-world setting”. They pulled the medical records from four hospitals in France of 181 patients of similar gender, age and health conditions. All the patients required oxygen because of lung infections caused by the virus.
The researchers said these patients were more representative of those admitted to hospitals swamped by the pandemic than those in some previous studies. The Wuhan trial, for instance, recruited only patients with mild symptoms, whose chance of recovery was high, even without treatment.
Among the patients who took hydroxychloroquine upon admission, 20.5 per cent had entered the intensive care unit or had died within a week. Among the patients who did not take the drug, the rate of ICU admission or mortality within a week was 22.1 per cent. The researchers said statistically there was no difference between the two groups.
“In conclusion, we found that hydroxychloroquine did not significantly reduce admission to ICU or death at day seven after hospital admission, or acute respiratory distress syndrome in hospitalised patients with hypoxemic pneumonia due to Covid-19,” the authors said. “These results are of major importance and do not support the use of hydroxychloroquine in patients hospitalised for a documented Sars-CoV-2 pneumonia,” they added. The conflicting observations have confused the public and health authorities around the world.
The doctors’ other concern was side effects. The hydroxychloroquine, although safer than chloroquine, could still cause a wide range of negative effects, including sudden cardiac death. The French study found nearly 10 per cent of patients taking the drug experienced abnormal heartbeats that required discontinuation of the treatment after about four days. In most of these cases, the heart muscle took longer than normal to recharge between beats.
“One patient who received no other medication that might interfere with cardiac conduction presented a first-degree atrioventricular block after two days of hydroxychloroquine treatment,” the researchers said.
Zhong Nanshan, a senior Chinese government scientist in Guangzhou, told local media that his team would soon publish a paper with positive results for chloroquine phosphate, another derivative drug in the chloroquine family.
“The average time [with chloroquine phosphate treatment] for the virus to turn negative is four days, and the control group [without the treatment] is eight or nine days. This improvement of symptoms is very certain,” Zhong told state television on Tuesday. “It can be a very effective cure.”
Research on the chloroquine family of drugs continues around the world as nations try to get the Covid-19 pandemic under control.
Small Chloroquine Study Halted Over Risk of Fatal Heart Complications A research trial of coronavirus patients in Brazil ended after patients taking a higher dose of chloroquine, one of the drugs President Trump has promoted, developed irregular heart rates.
By Katie Thomas and Knvul Sheikh April 12, 2020
A small study in Brazil was halted early for safety reasons after coronavirus patients taking a higher dose of chloroquine developed irregular heart rates that increased their risk of a potentially fatal heart arrhythmia.
Chloroquine is closely related to the more widely used drug hydroxychloroquine. President Trump has enthusiastically promoted them as a potential treatment for the novel coronavirus despite little evidence that they work, and despite concerns from some of his top health officials. Last month, the Food and Drug Administration granted emergency approval to allow hospitals to use chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine from the national stockpile if clinical trials were not feasible. Companies that manufacture both drugs are ramping up production.
The Brazilian study involved 81 hospitalized patients in the city of Manaus and was sponsored by the Brazilian state of Amazonas. It was posted on Saturday at medRxiv, an online server for medical articles, before undergoing peer review by other researchers. Because Brazil’s national guidelines recommend the use of chloroquine in coronavirus patients, the researchers said including a placebo in their trial — considered the best way to evaluate a drug — was an “impossibility.”
Despite its limitations, infectious disease doctors and drug safety experts said the study provided further evidence that chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine, which are both used to treat malaria, can pose significant harm to some patients, specifically the risk of a fatal heart arrhythmia. Patients in the trial were also given the antibiotic azithromycin, which carries the same heart risk. Hospitals in the United States are also using azithromycin to treat coronavirus patients, often in combination with hydroxychloroquine.
“To me, this study conveys one useful piece of information, which is that chloroquine causes a dose-dependent increase in an abnormality in the ECG that could predispose people to sudden cardiac death,” said Dr. David Juurlink, an internist and the head of the division of clinical pharmacology at the University of Toronto, referring to an electrocardiogram, which reads the heart’s electrical activity.
Roughly half the study participants were given a dose of 450 milligrams of chloroquine twice daily for five days, while the rest were prescribed a higher dose of 600 milligrams for 10 days. Within three days, researchers started noticing heart arrhythmias in patients taking the higher dose. By the sixth day of treatment, 11 patients had died, leading to an immediate end to the high-dose segment of the trial.
The researchers said the study did not have enough patients in the lower-dose portion of the trial to conclude if chloroquine was effective in patients with severe disease. More studies evaluating the drug earlier in the course of the disease are “urgently needed,” the researchers said.
Several clinical trials for chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine are testing low doses for shorter periods of time in coronavirus patients. But the Health Commission of Guangdong Province in China had initially recommended those sick with the virus be treated with 500 milligrams of chloroquine twice daily for 10 days.
One of the authors of the Brazilian study, Dr. Marcus Lacerda, said in an email on Sunday that his study found that “the high dosage that the Chinese were using is very toxic and kills more patients.”
“That is the reason this arm of the study was halted early,” he said, adding that the manuscript was being reviewed by the journal Lancet Global Health.
Dr. Bushra Mina, the section chief of pulmonary medicine at Lenox Hill Hospital in Manhattan, said the study would most likely not change his hospital’s practice of giving a five-day course of hydroxychloroquine and azithromycin to hospitalized patients who were not severely ill. Dr. Mina said patients are monitored daily for heart abnormalities and the drugs are stopped if any are found.
He said the study showed “if you’re going to use it because you have no alternative, then use it cautiously,” he said.
Roughly half the study participants were given a dose of 450 milligrams of chloroquine twice daily for five days, while the rest were prescribed a higher dose of 600 milligrams for 10 days. Within three days, researchers started noticing heart arrhythmias in patients taking the higher dose. By the sixth day of treatment, 11 patients had died, leading to an immediate end to the high-dose segment of the trial.
Well, when you overdose someone on 3x the maximum recommended daily dose of a medication you just might have an adverse reaction.
I posted the update in the other thread, but he is home with his family as of yesterday. Still unclear as to long-term side effects with the kidneys, though.
Hydroxychloroquine doesn’t help patients with coronavirus, French study finds.....
A drug that’s been touted by President Donald Trump as a “game changer” didn’t help hospitalized patients with coronavirus and was associated with heart complications, according to a new study.
“This provides evidence that hydroxychloroquine does not apparently treat patients with Covid 19,” said Dr. Paul Offit, an infectious disease specialist at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. “Even worse, there were side effects caused by the drug — heart toxicities that required it be discontinued.”
Trump has said that hydroxychloroquine shows “tremendous promise” and has made it sound like the drug is harmless.
“I think it’s going to be great,” Trump said at a White House briefing on March 19.
“What do you have to lose? Take it,” he said on April 4.
Physicians have warned that while Trump is enthusiastic about the drug, it still needs to be studied to see if it works and if it’s safe.
“People can claim what they want, but the proof is in the pudding, and this is the pudding,” Offit said.
In the French study, doctors looked back at medical records for 181 patients with Covid-19 who had pneumonia and required supplemental oxygen. About half had taken hydroxychloroquine within 48 hours of being admitted to the hospital, and the other half had not.
The doctors followed the patients and found there was no statistically significant difference in the death rates of the two groups, or their chances of being admitted to the intensive care unit.
The study also raised important safety concerns about hydroxychloroquine.
In the study, eight patients who took the drug developed abnormal heart rhythms and had to stop taking it.
Abnormal heart rhythms are a known side effect of hydroxychloroquine, which has been used for decades to treat patients with diseases such as malaria, lupus and rheumatoid arthritis.
Doctors in Sweden and Brazil have sounded warnings about chloroquine, a very similar drug, because of heart problems.
In the new study, among the 84 patients who took hydroxychloroquine, 20.2% were admitted to the ICU or died within seven days of taking the drug. Among the 97 patients who did not take the drug, 22.1% went to the ICU or died.
The difference was not determined to be statistically different
Looking just at deaths, 2.8% of the patients who took hydroxychloroquine died, and 4.6% of the patients who did not take it died. That difference was also not found to be statistically significant.
“These results do not support the use of [hydroxychloroquine] in patients hospitalised for documented SARSCoV-2-positive hypoxic pneumonia,” the study authors wrote.
The study was published Tuesday on medRxiv.org, a pre-print server founded by Yale University, the journal BMJ and Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory.
Yes - but the narrative is already out there for the Trump loyalists .... Trump tried to help and it was the mean, bad press that poo-poo'd the idea. Trump hero for trying. Press bad for being rational.
Same thing with the "theory" that the virus came from a lab. 23% or more of the USA believe the virus was created by China in a lab .... despite overwhelming opinion from experts in the field that say that's not the case.
Hell - wonder how many still think Obama is a Muslim born in Africa?
There’s a whole slew of doctors worldwide saying they won’t prescribe Hydro anymore. And trump has been mum on the subject for weeks. People probably died. More blood on trumps hand. Pffft.
A malaria drug widely touted by President Donald Trump for treating the new coronavirus showed no benefit in a large analysis of its use in U.S. veterans hospitals. There were more deaths among those given hydroxychloroquine versus standard care, researchers reported.
The nationwide study was not a rigorous experiment. But with 368 patients, it’s the largest look so far of hydroxychloroquine with or without the antibiotic azithromycin for COVID-19, which has killed more than 171,000 people as of Tuesday.
The study was posted on an online site for researchers and has been submitted to the New England Journal of Medicine, but has not been reviewed by other scientists. Grants from the National Institutes of Health and the University of Virginia paid for the work.
Researchers analyzed medical records of 368 male veterans hospitalized with confirmed coronavirus infection at Veterans Health Administration medical centers who died or were discharged by April 11.
About 28% who were given hydroxychloroquine plus usual care died, versus 11% of those getting routine care alone. About 22% of those getting the drug plus azithromycin died too, but the difference between that group and usual care was not considered large enough to rule out other factors that could have affected survival.
Hydroxychloroquine made no difference in the need for a breathing machine, either.
Researchers did not track side effects, but noted hints that hydroxychloroquine might have damaged other organs. The drug has long been known to have potentially serious side effects, including altering the heartbeat in a way that could lead to sudden death.
Earlier this month, scientists in Brazil stopped part of a hydroxychloroquine study after heart rhythm problems developed in one-quarter of people given the higher of two doses being tested.
Many doctors have been leery of the drug.
At the University of Wisconsin, Madison, “I think we’re all rather underwhelmed” at what’s been seen among the few patients there who’ve tried it, said Dr. Nasia Safdar, medical director of infection control and prevention.
Patients asked about it soon after Trump started promoting its use, “but now I think that people have realized we don’t know if it works or not” and needs more study, said Safdar, who had no role in the VA analysis.
The NIH and others have more rigorous tests underway.
Same thing with the "theory" that the virus came from a lab. 23% or more of the USA believe the virus was created by China in a lab .... despite overwhelming opinion from experts in the field that say that's not the case.
FWIW: "Came from a lab" and "created in a lab" are NOT the same thing. It very much can be a naturally occurring virus AND still have had the entire thing have come from a lab. What people are saying is that this virus was being studied in the lab in Wuhan. Patient 0 worked at that lab, and visited the wet market.
I'm in the camp that it doesn't really matter.... BUT, that little factoid, if true, sure would explain a LOT about China's actions and motives.
Same thing with the "theory" that the virus came from a lab. 23% or more of the USA believe the virus was created by China in a lab .... despite overwhelming opinion from experts in the field that say that's not the case.
FWIW: "Came from a lab" and "created in a lab" are NOT the same thing. It very much can be a naturally occurring virus AND still have had the entire thing have come from a lab. What people are saying is that this virus was being studied in the lab in Wuhan. Patient 0 worked at that lab, and visited the wet market.
I'm in the camp that it doesn't really matter.... BUT, that little factoid, if true, sure would explain a LOT about China's actions and motives.
You are correct. Came from / created from is not the same thing.
With all due respect you don't have the resources to determine whether the drug works or not. You're also not in a position or have enough knowledge to say that the drug has shown little to no efficacy. You need to be careful how you form your own opinions, don't lecture others when you're not in a position to know the info one way or another. I like how you act like an expert but unless you actually work on the study itself you only know just as much as what they release or the media decides to tell you.
With all due respect you don't have the resources to determine whether the drug works or not. You're also not in a position or have enough knowledge to say that the drug has shown little to no efficacy. You need to be careful how you form your own opinions, don't lecture others when you're not in a position to know the info one way or another. I like how you act like an expert but unless you actually work on the study itself you only know just as much as what they release or the media decides to tell you.
I have seen several people on TV praising the drug for saving their life. If I get the virus I will try anything. I don''t want Liberals deciding for me.
More deaths, no benefit from malaria drug in VA virus study By MARILYNN MARCHIONE yesterday
FILE - This Monday, April 6, 2020 file photo shows an arrangement of hydroxychloroquine pills in Las Vegas. According to a study released on Tuesday, April 21, 2020, the malaria drug widely touted by President Donald Trump for treating the new coronavirus showed no benefit in an analysis of its use in U.S. veterans hospitals. There were more deaths among those given hydroxychloroquine versus standard care, researchers report. (AP Photo/John Locher) A malaria drug widely touted by President Donald Trump for treating the new coronavirus showed no benefit in a large analysis of its use in U.S. veterans hospitals. There were more deaths among those given hydroxychloroquine versus standard care, researchers reported.
The nationwide study was not a rigorous experiment. But with 368 patients, it’s the largest look so far of hydroxychloroquine with or without the antibiotic azithromycin for COVID-19, which has killed more than 171,000 people as of Tuesday.
The study was posted on an online site for researchers and has not been reviewed by other scientists. Grants from the National Institutes of Health and the University of Virginia paid for the work.
Researchers analyzed medical records of 368 male veterans hospitalized with confirmed coronavirus infection at Veterans Health Administration medical centers who died or were discharged by April 11.
About 28% who were given hydroxychloroquine plus usual care died, versus 11% of those getting routine care alone. About 22% of those getting the drug plus azithromycin died too, but the difference between that group and usual care was not considered large enough to rule out other factors that could have affected survival.
Hydroxychloroquine made no difference in the need for a breathing machine, either.
Researchers did not track side effects, but noted a hint that hydroxychloroquine might have damaged other organs. The drug has long been known to have potentially serious side effects, including altering the heartbeat in a way that could lead to sudden death.
Full Coverage: Understanding the Outbreak Earlier this month, scientists in Brazil stopped part of a study testing chloroquine, an older drug similar to hydroxychloroquine, after heart rhythm problems developed in one-quarter of people given the higher of two doses being tested.
On Tuesday, NIH issued new treatment guidelines from a panel of experts, saying there was not enough evidence to recommend for or against chloroquine or hydroxychloroquine for COVID-19. But it also advised against using hydroxychloroquine with azithromycin because of the potential side effects.
Many doctors have been leery of the drug.
At the University of Wisconsin, Madison, “I think we’re all rather underwhelmed” at what’s been seen among the few patients there who’ve tried it, said Dr. Nasia Safdar, medical director of infection control and prevention.
Patients asked about it soon after Trump started promoting its use, “but now I think that people have realized we don’t know if it works or not” and needs more study, said Safdar, who had no role in the VA analysis.
The NIH and others have more rigorous tests underway.
With all due respect you don't have the resources to determine whether the drug works or not. You're also not in a position or have enough knowledge to say that the drug has shown little to no efficacy. You need to be careful how you form your own opinions, don't lecture others when you're not in a position to know the info one way or another. I like how you act like an expert but unless you actually work on the study itself you only know just as much as what they release or the media decides to tell you.
I've never seen so many liberals HOPING for outbreaks in red states so they can give them the big finger of I told you so...
It's pathetic and disgusting and shows the utter lack of humanity that the left has and the depths to which they are willing to sink to win a political argument...
It's all over the place, the media elite are doing it, their much-beloved Hollywood celebs are doing it, all the way down to your garden variety hate-filled leftist doing it.
They are quick to tell you, "Well, I don't actually hope anybody dies..." Yea, you just hope for an outbreak because nothing TRUMPS your desire to be right.
Trump said Hydro showed promise and people should consider talking to their doctor about taking it and the left went on a rampage.. hoping it wouldn't work.. because they would rather have people suffer than have to admit Trump was right...
It would be funny if it wasn't so sad... democrat in congress admitted they are using the second stimulus plan for small business because they think they have leverage to get their own initiatives in it.. [censored] the small business owners in this country, just [censored] 'em.. we have political points to score here.
Saying people are doing stupid things that will cause the virus to spread isn't the same thing as wanting it to happen. We wish all people from both parties would do the responsible thing. Yet obviously they aren't. At least that's my perspective.
Democrats are using it? You mean to get more money for hospitals and testing? Those awful democrats!
I've never seen so many liberals HOPING for outbreaks in red states so they can give them the big finger of I told you so...
It's pathetic and disgusting and shows the utter lack of humanity that the left has and the depths to which they are willing to sink to win a political argument...
It's all over the place, the media elite are doing it, their much-beloved Hollywood celebs are doing it, all the way down to your garden variety hate-filled leftist doing it.
They are quick to tell you, "Well, I don't actually hope anybody dies..." Yea, you just hope for an outbreak because nothing TRUMPS your desire to be right.
Trump said Hydro showed promise and people should consider talking to their doctor about taking it and the left went on a rampage.. hoping it wouldn't work.. because they would rather have people suffer than have to admit Trump was right...
It would be funny if it wasn't so sad... democrat in congress admitted they are using the second stimulus plan for small business because they think they have leverage to get their own initiatives in it.. [censored] the small business owners in this country, just [censored] 'em.. we have political points to score here.
I've stopped paying much attention because there is a lot of BS - both ways on some topics.
However - the ONLY things I have seen posted about Red/Blue states and cities etc ..... is from the Trump supporters producing a list of places with high CV numbers and saying 'why are Democrat run and cities/states' the worst hit.
Now on the one hand you can say - hey it's a factual based question ... but maybe there was something of an agenda behind that? Isn't it expected that the most cases will come from metro cities with dense populations ... many/most of which lean left? Why or how is that relevant to discussing or solving the issues?
If I missed posts or debates about this topic or something relevant ... apologies. And last thing - regardless left, right or Trumpian, I don't think anyone is willing illness and death on any part of the population regardless of how heated the debate.
j/c... Doctor Says He Was Removed From Federal Post After Questioning Hydroxychloroquine Treatment
The doctor who led the federal agency involved in developing a coronavirus vaccine said on Wednesday that he was removed from his post after he pressed for a rigorous vetting of a coronavirus treatment embraced by President Trump. The doctor said that science, not “politics and cronyism” must lead the way.
Dr. Rick Bright was abruptly dismissed this week as the director of the Department of Health and Human Services’ Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority, or BARDA, and as the deputy assistant secretary for preparedness and response.
Instead, he was given a narrower job at the National Institutes of Health. “I believe this transfer was in response to my insistence that the government invest the billions of dollars allocated by Congress to address the Covid-19 pandemic into safe and scientifically vetted solutions, and not in drugs, vaccines and other technologies that lack scientific merit,” he said in a statement to The Times’s Maggie Haberman.
“I am speaking out because to combat this deadly virus, science — not politics or cronyism — has to lead the way,” he said.
The White House declined to comment. A spokeswoman for Alex Azar, the HHS secretary, did not immediately respond to an email seeking comment. The medical publication Stat reported on Tuesday that Dr. Bright had clashed with Bob Kadlec, the assistant health secretary for preparedness and response.
Dr. Bright, who noted that his entire career had been spent in vaccine development both in and outside of government, has led BARDA since 2016.
In the statement, he said: “My professional background has prepared me for a moment like this — to confront and defeat a deadly virus that threatens Americans and people around the globe. To this point, I have led the government’s efforts to invest in the best science available to combat the Covid-19 pandemic.
“Unfortunately, this resulted in clashes with H.H.S. political leadership, including criticism for my proactive efforts to invest early into vaccines and supplies critical to saving American lives. I also resisted efforts to fund potentially dangerous drugs promoted by those with political connections,” he said.
Dr. Bright, who is a career official and not a political appointee, pointed specifically to the initial efforts to make chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine widely available before it was scientifically tested for efficacy with the coronavirus.
“Specifically, and contrary to misguided directives, I limited the broad use of chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine, promoted by the administration as a panacea, but which clearly lack scientific merit,” he said.
“While I am prepared to look at all options and to think ‘outside the box’ for effective treatments, I rightly resisted efforts to provide an unproven drug on demand to the American public,” Dr. Bright said, describing what ultimately happened: “I insisted that these drugs be provided only to hospitalized patients with confirmed Covid-19 while under the supervision of a physician.
“These drugs have potentially serious risks associated with them, including increased mortality observed in some recent studies in patients with Covid-19.
“Sidelining me in the middle of this pandemic and placing politics and cronyism ahead of science puts lives at risk and stunts national efforts to safely and effectively address this urgent public health crisis,” Dr. Bright said.
“I will request that the inspector general of the Department of Health and Human Services investigate the manner in which this administration has politicized the work of BARDA and has pressured me and other conscientious scientists to fund companies with political connections and efforts that lack scientific merit,” he said. “Rushing blindly towards unproven drugs can be disastrous and result in countless more deaths. Science, in service to the health and safety of the American people, must always trump politics.”
On Tuesday a panel of experts convened by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, the federal agency led by Dr. Anthony Fauci, issued guidelines stating that experts had collected insufficient data to recommend either for or against the use of any antiviral drug or medication that affects the immune system in patients with Covid-19.
The panel did specifically advise against several treatments unless they were given in clinical trials. One was the combination of hydroxychloroquine plus the antibiotic azithromycin, which Mr. Trump has repeatedly promoted despite the lack of evidence that they work. Those drugs should be used only in clinical trials “because of the potential for toxicities,” the experts said.
The panel also had cautionary advice about hydroxychloroquine and chloroquine, even when given without azithromycin, saying that patients receiving them should be monitored for adverse effects, particularly an abnormality in heart rhythm.
Our lack of trust towards facts, science, and sound medical advice will make this pandemic go on longer than it needs to.
Now come the "you're so smart, facts are a liberal invention, and this cure is worse than the disease!" replies.
To those who have that mentality, take it up with the government who said they would help you. Other countries are finding ways to provide for their people. Maybe it should start by not giving executives a large cushion so they can still receive their annual million dollar bonuses...
Well you got me. I'm giddy at the thought of Trumpians spreading the virus and dying... smh I thought I just saw you use 'asinine' in a post so I assume you know the meaning.
Saying people are doing stupid things that will cause the virus to spread isn't the same thing as wanting it to happen.
Saying "Natural selection loves a trumpian" sounds much closer to the latter. In fact, it sounds downright giddy at the thought.
So it's your supposition that isolated comments represent "Democrats" as a whole?
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We wish all people from both parties would do the responsible thing. Yet obviously they aren't.
What is the responsible thing?
Following the instructions of places like the CDC and their guidelines put in place at Trump's own daily briefing of what the parameters are for opening the nation back up in phases.
Certainly going out and protesting while ignoring social distancing does not qualify as responsible.
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Democrats are using it? You mean to get more money for hospitals and testing? Those awful democrats!
Yea, that's all they want. And yea, they are awful.
Then why don't you explain to me what it was the Democrats were after in this last bill that held it up you find to be so self serving for them?
They are somehow as or more awful as the stunts and lies Trump is telling?
You do understand that Trump is supporting people to demonstrate to open up states that do not even qualify according to the very standards set in pace at his own briefing, right? That he is purposefully using a national emergency to sow discourse rather than unity, right?
I'm not sure if you're joking or whether you've just fallen off the deep end here.
Utter disgrace Democrats have turned out to be. Someone had their life saved by a drug the President spoke of and she said Thank You. Now the Democrats want to Censure her. Wake up!!!
We're not allowed to sterilize it, either.... like it or not, Stupid has Rights, and Stupid deserves fair treatment and not politicized crap that is only happening as an indirect avenue to attack someone else.
It's just a sickening extension of partisan stupidity that really just takes things too far.
FDA issues warnings on chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine after deaths and poisonings reported PUBLISHED FRI, APR 24 202010:06 AM EDTUPDATED MOMENTS AGO Berkeley Lovelace Jr. @BERKELEYJR KEY POINTS The agency also said it became aware of reports of “serious heart rhythm problems” in patients with the virus who were treated with the malaria drugs. It said patients taking the drugs for approved reasons, including malaria or to treat autoimmune conditions like lupus, should continue taking their medicine as prescribed.
Researchers cut chloroquine study short after ‘primary outcome’ was death
The Food and Drug Administration warned consumers Friday against taking malaria drugs chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine to treat Covid-19 outside a hospital or formal clinical trial setting after deaths and poisonings were reported.
The agency said patients taking the drugs for approved reasons, including malaria or to treat autoimmune conditions like lupus, should continue taking their medicine as prescribed.
The agency also said it became aware of reports of “serious heart rhythm problems” in patients with the virus who were treated with the malaria drugs, often in combination with antibiotic azithromycin, commonly known as a Z-Pak. It also warned physicians against prescribing the drugs to treat the coronavirus outside of a hospital.
“Hydroxychloroquine and chloroquine can cause abnormal heart rhythms such as QT interval prolongation and a dangerously rapid heart rate called ventricular tachycardia,” the agency wrote in the notice. “We will continue to investigate risks associated with the use of hydroxychloroquine and chloroquine for COVID-19 and communicate publicly when we have more information.”
GP: Production of chloroquine phosphate An employee checks the production of chloroquine phosphate, resumed after a 15-year break, in a pharmaceutical company in Nantong city in east China’s Jiangsu province Thursday, Feb. 27, 2020. Chloroquine phosphate, an old drug for the treatment of malaria, has shown some efficacy and acceptable safety against COVID-19 associated pneumonia in trials, according to Chinese media. Feature China | Barcroft Media | Getty Images The peer-reviewed Journal of the American Medical Association released a new study Friday that said researchers cut short a study testing chloroquine as a potential treatment for Covid-19 over safety concerns, citing a “primary outcome” of death. Nearly two dozen patients died and some developed irregular heart rates after taking doses of the drug daily.
The FDA’s warning was issued after JAMA shared the study results with the scientific community but before they were released to the public on Friday.
There are no proven treatments for Covid-19, which has infected more than 2.7 million people worldwide and killed at least 191,231 as of Friday morning, according to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University. U.S. health officials say a vaccine to prevent the disease will take at least 12 to 18 months, meaning finding an effective drug treatment soon is crucial.
Chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine are known to have serious side effects, including muscle weakness and heart arrhythmia.
Chloroquine was approved by FDA in 1949 to treat malaria. Its derivative, hydroxychloroquine, is often used by doctors to treat rheumatoid arthritis and lupus. The drugs have been touted by President Donald Trump as a potential “game changer” in the fight against the coronavirus.
Both drugs are in clinical trials examining their effectiveness in treating the Covid-19, but neither are proven treatments.
Chloroquine gained a lot of attention after a small study of 36 Covid-19 patients published March 17 in France found that most patients taking the drug cleared the coronavirus from their system a lot faster than the control group. Adding azithromycin to the mix “was significantly more efficient for virus elimination,” the researchers said. Infectious disease experts and scientists warned that the findings were not definitive.
The FDA has cleared some emergency use of the drugs, but the agency said Friday they have not been approved to prevent or treat the coronavirus.
FDA issues warnings on chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine after deaths and poisonings reported PUBLISHED FRI, APR 24 202010:06 AM EDTUPDATED MOMENTS AGO Berkeley Lovelace Jr. @BERKELEYJR KEY POINTS The agency also said it became aware of reports of “serious heart rhythm problems” in patients with the virus who were treated with the malaria drugs. It said patients taking the drugs for approved reasons, including malaria or to treat autoimmune conditions like lupus, should continue taking their medicine as prescribed.
Researchers cut chloroquine study short after ‘primary outcome’ was death
The Food and Drug Administration warned consumers Friday against taking malaria drugs chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine to treat Covid-19 outside a hospital or formal clinical trial setting after deaths and poisonings were reported.
The agency said patients taking the drugs for approved reasons, including malaria or to treat autoimmune conditions like lupus, should continue taking their medicine as prescribed.
The agency also said it became aware of reports of “serious heart rhythm problems” in patients with the virus who were treated with the malaria drugs, often in combination with antibiotic azithromycin, commonly known as a Z-Pak. It also warned physicians against prescribing the drugs to treat the coronavirus outside of a hospital.
“Hydroxychloroquine and chloroquine can cause abnormal heart rhythms such as QT interval prolongation and a dangerously rapid heart rate called ventricular tachycardia,” the agency wrote in the notice. “We will continue to investigate risks associated with the use of hydroxychloroquine and chloroquine for COVID-19 and communicate publicly when we have more information.”
GP: Production of chloroquine phosphate An employee checks the production of chloroquine phosphate, resumed after a 15-year break, in a pharmaceutical company in Nantong city in east China’s Jiangsu province Thursday, Feb. 27, 2020. Chloroquine phosphate, an old drug for the treatment of malaria, has shown some efficacy and acceptable safety against COVID-19 associated pneumonia in trials, according to Chinese media. Feature China | Barcroft Media | Getty Images The peer-reviewed Journal of the American Medical Association released a new study Friday that said researchers cut short a study testing chloroquine as a potential treatment for Covid-19 over safety concerns, citing a “primary outcome” of death. Nearly two dozen patients died and some developed irregular heart rates after taking doses of the drug daily.
The FDA’s warning was issued after JAMA shared the study results with the scientific community but before they were released to the public on Friday.
There are no proven treatments for Covid-19, which has infected more than 2.7 million people worldwide and killed at least 191,231 as of Friday morning, according to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University. U.S. health officials say a vaccine to prevent the disease will take at least 12 to 18 months, meaning finding an effective drug treatment soon is crucial.
Chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine are known to have serious side effects, including muscle weakness and heart arrhythmia.
Chloroquine was approved by FDA in 1949 to treat malaria. Its derivative, hydroxychloroquine, is often used by doctors to treat rheumatoid arthritis and lupus. The drugs have been touted by President Donald Trump as a potential “game changer” in the fight against the coronavirus.
Both drugs are in clinical trials examining their effectiveness in treating the Covid-19, but neither are proven treatments.
Chloroquine gained a lot of attention after a small study of 36 Covid-19 patients published March 17 in France found that most patients taking the drug cleared the coronavirus from their system a lot faster than the control group. Adding azithromycin to the mix “was significantly more efficient for virus elimination,” the researchers said. Infectious disease experts and scientists warned that the findings were not definitive.
The FDA has cleared some emergency use of the drugs, but the agency said Friday they have not been approved to prevent or treat the coronavirus.
It made this congresswoman better. But, what does the left say. Let's censure her and shut her up!!!
This Congress woman was dying! She heard President Trump speak about the drug and asked her Dr. to try the drug. He did. She got better. But, since that goes against some left wing agenda she must be silenced. The last time I checked this was still the USA and we had freedom of speech. The Democrats have not gained full control yet and took that freedom away yet.
So all the evidence of the contrary means nothing? You do realize many people in her condition recover without taking it, right? So there is nothing but her "feelings" that it was actually why she got better. You do grasp that, right?
So all the evidence of the contrary means nothing? You do realize many people in her condition recover without taking it, right? So there is nothing but her "feelings" that it was actually why she got better. You do grasp that, right?
its good we have Dr Pit and Dr OCD to keep an eye on our health. Where do you get your info Dr Pelosi and Dr Shumer?
You aren't listening to Dr's. You're listening to the opinion of a woman who has no idea why her condition actually improved.
You've ignored what the vast majority of health professionals are saying. So even if I were a doctor it wouldn't make any difference. I look at evidence from doctors. You listen and use an argument from someone with zero qualifications.
So all the evidence of the contrary means nothing? You do realize many people in her condition recover without taking it, right? So there is nothing but her "feelings" that it was actually why she got better. You do grasp that, right?
So should she be censured for having an opinion. Is that what Democrats have come to?
So all the evidence of the contrary means nothing? You do realize many people in her condition recover without taking it, right? So there is nothing but her "feelings" that it was actually why she got better. You do grasp that, right?
its good we have Dr Pit and Dr OCD to keep an eye on our health. Where do you get your info Dr Pelosi and Dr Shumer?
as we listen to Doc Duty and "Doc Lady that Swears it Fixed her and now her teeth are whiter and her husband is more attentive, too"?
This Congress woman was dying! She heard President Trump speak about the drug and asked her Dr. to try the drug. He did. She got better. But, since that goes against some left wing agenda she must be silenced. The last time I checked this was still the USA and we had freedom of speech. The Democrats have not gained full control yet and took that freedom away yet.
She was either going to get well anyway or something else saved her. She's spouting this belief because of the placebo effect. There is no proof it helped her and evidence that it did not.
So all the evidence of the contrary means nothing? You do realize many people in her condition recover without taking it, right? So there is nothing but her "feelings" that it was actually why she got better. You do grasp that, right?
its good we have Dr Pit and Dr OCD to keep an eye on our health. Where do you get your info Dr Pelosi and Dr Shumer?
You can go kill yourself anyway you like, I wouldn't want to inconvenience you with facts.
So all the evidence of the contrary means nothing? You do realize many people in her condition recover without taking it, right? So there is nothing but her "feelings" that it was actually why she got better. You do grasp that, right?
So should she be censured for having an opinion. Is that what Democrats have come to?
She should be censured for backing up Trump's dangerous false claims about this medicine. She is obviously still very ill.
So all the evidence of the contrary means nothing? You do realize many people in her condition recover without taking it, right? So there is nothing but her "feelings" that it was actually why she got better. You do grasp that, right?
So should she be censured for having an opinion. Is that what Democrats have come to?
That's something nobody has even hinted at. What should be done is to listen to the experts and not someone who is totally unqualified to make such a conclusion. You know, just like the guy who said, "I'm not a doctor but I've heard some good things".
So all the evidence of the contrary means nothing? You do realize many people in her condition recover without taking it, right? So there is nothing but her "feelings" that it was actually why she got better. You do grasp that, right?
So should she be censured for having an opinion. Is that what Democrats have come to?
That's something nobody has even hinted at. What should be done is to listen to the experts and not someone who is totally unqualified to make such a conclusion. You know, just like the guy who said, "I'm not a doctor but I've heard some good things".
Yes the Democratic party in Michigan want to censure her for her opinion. She strongly feels that the drug made her better. Why should her opinion be censured? This is America. She is intitiled to her opinion.
Utter disgrace Democrats have turned out to be. Someone had their life saved by a drug the President spoke of and she said Thank You. Now the Democrats want to Censure her. Wake up!!!
Thanks for the link. I'm not one to trust any single news source, but after looking at several sources I find it to appear accurate. There's no room for that type of behavior. It's very much the way most Republicans are treating Mitt Romney and how Trump treated John McCain. Both alive and dead.
You aren't listening to Dr's. You're listening to the opinion of a woman who has no idea why her condition actually improved.
You've ignored what the vast majority of health professionals are saying. So even if I were a doctor it wouldn't make any difference. I look at evidence from doctors. You listen and use an argument from someone with zero qualifications.
It's not just one woman Pit. I have seen several people say it saved their life. You might be right. Maybe they just got better on their own but if I get sick I want the drug.
And that's certainly your right should your doctor agree to prescribe it for you. But healthcare professionals do not agree about the drug. That's the point I've been trying to make.
FDA issues warnings on chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine after deaths and poisonings reported.
The agency also said it became aware of reports of “serious heart rhythm problems” in patients with the virus who were treated with the malaria drugs.
There are several more. I know our politics is different. And I don't begrudge you your right to believe whatever you want. Hell if you want to take Trump's advice from yesterday and inject disinfectants into your system you have that right as well.
But I'm one who has at least some trust in science. If the FDA is telling me it doesn't work, I'm going to trust those experts over people with no experience in the field saying what they "think helped them".
And that's certainly your right should your doctor agree to prescribe it for you. But healthcare professionals do not agree about the drug. That's the point I've been trying to make.
FDA issues warnings on chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine after deaths and poisonings reported.
The agency also said it became aware of reports of “serious heart rhythm problems” in patients with the virus who were treated with the malaria drugs.
There are several more. I know our politics is different. And I don't begrudge you your right to believe whatever you want. Hell if you want to take Trump's advice from yesterday and inject disinfectants into your system you have that right as well.
But I'm one who has at least some trust in science. If the FDA is telling me it doesn't work, I'm going to trust those experts over people with no experience in the field saying what they "think helped them".
But that's just me.
o Trump didn't tell anybody to inject lysol or anything else. I just watched his exact words on my belovedFox news.You should get off fake news and find out the real story. That is if you want the truth.
I watched him say it. No, he didn't "tell anybody to". But he certainly said it was an option to look into. Do you know or are you willing to admit just how crazy that is? When watching him speak, are you suggesting which channel you watch him speak on makes a difference? I'm watching him now just to see what other things from Crazy Town he'll say today.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) on Friday warned against the use of two antimalarial drugs that have been touted as possible treatments for the novel coronavirus following reports of “serious heart rhythm problems” in COVID-19 patients treated with the medications.
The drugs hydroxychloroquine and chloroquine should not be used outside of a hospital or clinical setting, the agency said, especially when used alongside the antibiotic azithromycin, also known as a Z-Pak.
"The FDA is aware of reports of serious heart rhythm problems in patients with COVID-19 treated with hydroxychloroquine or chloroquine, often in combination with azithromycin," the FDA said on its website.
"We are also aware of increased use of these medicines through outpatient prescriptions. Therefore, we would like to remind health care professionals and patients of the known risks associated with both hydroxychloroquine and chloroquine," it added.
I think you focused on the wrong part. The reason it should only be used in a hospital is since it can cause heart complications you better be somewhere they can treat you if you use it. It also does not say it can help you.
Call me old fashion, but I’ll take the word of an actual doctor of medicine over the WH spin doctors.
Totally agree with this. There are enough people out there that feel it helped them that I'd be willing to give it a try if I came down with the virus. I wouldn't rely on uninformed politicians and pundits with an axe to grind telling me whether or not to take it. It's just as bad from both directions.
... 
But I digress because you can't fix stupid.
