6 ms·
I’m wondering what took so long? Shouldn’t we be ready to do something like this almost immediately? Still seems chloroquine is required to meet a higher bar t
by pbreit 7y ago
I’m wondering what took so long? Shouldn’t we be ready to do something like this almost immediately?
Still seems chloroquine is required to meet a higher bar than the others which continues to be odd.
- Filligree 7y agoChloroquine has a host of potential, damaging side-effects. It's reasonable to hold it to a higher standard when the risks of taking it are also higher.
- news_hacker 7y agoAnd do the others not?
- jansan 7y agoIt seems quite a few countries in Europe are moving towards hydroxichloroquine/chloroquine and away from lopinavir-ritonavir for the recommended treatment of severe cases.
- batter 7y agoIsn't lopinavir-ritonavir already verified it doesn't help?
- ComputerGuru 7y agoRead the article. Despite poor results from China, WHO feels larger testing against a wider variety of patients is warranted.
- dharmab 7y agoMostly by "global interest". Reading between the lines, I wonder if they're being pressured.
- throwaway4787 7y agoChloroquine has shown promising results but the number of cases was small and the study was flawed. Lopinavir-ritonavir has shown disappointing results but the number of cases was small and the study was flawed. If you show faith in one you've got to show faith in the other for the sake of methodological consistency.
- TheHypnotist 7y agoTop comment alludes to the stage of the disease as being important. So when we talk severity, is it severity by stage? Or overall severity? How will these drugs help when the disease has already attacked the lungs causing the large immuno response?
- rscho 7y agoOne common answer to all questions about covid: we don't know. All we have is extremely preliminary evidence, and we're acting on it in hope of luck and also just to provide people with something to cling to.
- rscho 7y agoWhat took so long? Professoral genitalia sizing contests. That's what.
- endorphone 7y agoThe fact that this particular treatment has a booster club is odder still. People are acting like they have a personal stake in which treatment wins. I mean...it seems likely that some of the boosters who have been astroturfing it do actually have a stake.
- programmarchy 7y agoI think the patents on chloroquine are long expired so won’t yield large profits for the pharmaceutical industry. Given the regulatory capture of the FDA in the US, my cynical side would not be surprised if lobbyists find a way to twist things toward the favor of more profitable drugs.
- endorphone 7y agoThere are always vested interests and people with a financial stake, though I was talking about something much lower-level. A number of zero-medical-experience personalities have become mini-celebrities with their boosting of it. For those who saw the movie "Contagion", their behavior is shockingly similar to the Jude Law character and its boosting of Forsythia. Some of these people are active on HN, and it's amazing how often absolute trash science is heralded like it's some suppressed truth. A few days back Trump was retweeting one such huckster. A guy who has repeatedly tried to recreate his own Wikipedia page (to be deleted again for non-notability). Who has a pretty standard hustler-and-exploiter bio. Now he's claiming that he's at the forefront of "working with companies" to get this magical treatment to the streets. It is deplorable.
- marcosdumay 7y agoIt is the one treatment that is cheap, already manufactured in large scale, and not in control of any single entity. Of course people are rooting for it.
- endorphone 7y ago"already manufactured in large scale" People who need it for medical conditions are finding it impossible to find. Not sure how large the production is. Any treatment that is found to actually be effective in real studies is pretty clearly going to be nationalized, recreated by countries around the globe, and mass produced overnight.
- tom_mellior 7y ago> Still seems chloroquine is required to meet a higher bar than the others which continues to be odd. Does the article say anything about different bars for the different treatments? I must have missed that. What are you referring to?
- onychomys 7y agoWhat took so long? It's clear you've never been involved in clinical trials. This is blisteringly fast. These things usually take many months of planning and review.
- lekanwang 7y agoThe WHO usually isn't in the business of sponsoring trials. The development of a single master protocol takes time, especially for one as large as this, and pulling one together within just a few weeks is already quite incredible, given the many, many partners that have to be involved, and how carefully you have to design it to balance a bunch of different factors.