4 ms·

Point is that the study is done at the wrong stage, too late.

by julioo 6y ago

IAmEveryone 6y ago
Point is far too much time and money has been wasted chasing this particular goose just because your cult leader saw it as the silver bullet that could save his re-election. I hope we don’t waste additional bandwidth in the medical community just to disprove additional no-true-Scotsmen rewritings of history. Just this comment section already features two of them: “too late”, and “only in combination with zinc”.
- adrianN 6y ago
  I don't think we wasted too much time and money on chloroquine. It looked promising in early trials. The proper thing to do is follow up on that. If it helped even just a little it would save literally thousands of lives. Having a well known drug be even slightly effective is pretty close to the best case scenario. Not following up on such leads would be stupid.
- rhino369 6y ago
  The Trump thing is a huge distraction. Doctors in China and Europe were already singing its praises before Trump got involved. These tests aren't happening because Trump got excited about it.
- TomatoTomato 6y ago
  It's a lot cheaper to test a known drug than to create a new one.
beckingz 6y ago
Isn't this at the same stage as the preliminary french trials that made headlines?
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
jonny_eh 6y ago
You may be right, but isn't acting like we all knew this is moving the goalpost?
- cm2187 6y ago
  I don't think it is moving the goalpost. The french doctor who first advocated this molecule pushed from the outset for testing and treating early rather than waiting for respiratory problems as we currently do [1]. In fact he later mentioned that when people had severe respiratory problems, the viral load was low and an anti-viral treatment wouldn't really help. [1] https://youtu.be/n4J8kydOvbc?t=1038 https://youtu.be/n4J8kydOvbc?t=1038
CydeWeys 6y ago
That may be, but it's gonna be harder logistically to do a study commencing from onset of symptoms vs at moment of hospitalization. There's also the fact that study makes it less likely that pre-hospitalization HCQ will have any effect either. Applying a Bayesian analysis here, it's now likelier that the true ground truth is simply that HCQ doesn't do anything to COVID-19 at all, not necessarily that it works only in a narrow early window. HCQ has severe side effects too, that require close monitoring and can be fatal. If it's not clearly doing good then it definitely shouldn't be being given to COVID-19 patients. Personally, my hopes are more on remdesivir and favipiravir, both of which are actual antivirals (HCQ is not) and thus were always more promising. HCQ was never the most promising drug candidate, and the only reason we're even talking about it as much as we are is that, for whatever random reason, that's the one Trump heard about first and then fixated on.
- Symmetry 6y ago
  The study that made me think there might be something to it was looking at people taking it for unrelated illnesses and finding that they weren't tending to show up hospitalized with Covid-19. I'd agree that we really don't have any evidence that giving it to hospitalized patients helps at all. Most antivirals have to be taken at the early stages of an infection. The best looking treatment for people seriously ill with Covid-19 right now seems to be IL-6 inhibitors. That won't stop you from getting sick but might let you avoid intubation.
  - CydeWeys 6y ago
    Good to know, I'll keep my eyes out on those studies as well.
  - ModernMech 6y ago
    This could be correlation. People taking HCQ have autoimmune problems like lupus, and therefore would be more cautious and practicing social distancing earlier, therefore not getting infected in the first place. It also might be true that people who are agoraphobic shut ins are not contracting covid. But that doesn't tell us much about how covid interacts with agoraphobia.

Point is that the study is done at the wrong stage, too late.

by julioo 6y ago

Point is that the study is done at the wrong stage, too late.

Point is far too much time and money has been wasted chasing this particular goose just because your cult leader saw it as the silver bullet that could save his re-election. I hope we don’t waste additional bandwidth in the medical community just to disprove additional no-true-Scotsmen rewritings of history. Just this comment section already features two of them: “too late”, and “only in combination with zinc”.

adrianN 6y ago
I don't think we wasted too much time and money on chloroquine. It looked promising in early trials. The proper thing to do is follow up on that. If it helped even just a little it would save literally thousands of lives. Having a well known drug be even slightly effective is pretty close to the best case scenario. Not following up on such leads would be stupid.
rhino369 6y ago
The Trump thing is a huge distraction. Doctors in China and Europe were already singing its praises before Trump got involved. These tests aren't happening because Trump got excited about it.
TomatoTomato 6y ago
It's a lot cheaper to test a known drug than to create a new one.

beckingz 6y ago

Isn't this at the same stage as the preliminary french trials that made headlines?

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

jonny_eh 6y ago

You may be right, but isn't acting like we all knew this is moving the goalpost?

cm2187 6y ago
I don't think it is moving the goalpost. The french doctor who first advocated this molecule pushed from the outset for testing and treating early rather than waiting for respiratory problems as we currently do [1]. In fact he later mentioned that when people had severe respiratory problems, the viral load was low and an anti-viral treatment wouldn't really help. [1] https://youtu.be/n4J8kydOvbc?t=1038 https://youtu.be/n4J8kydOvbc?t=1038

CydeWeys 6y ago

That may be, but it's gonna be harder logistically to do a study commencing from onset of symptoms vs at moment of hospitalization. There's also the fact that study makes it less likely that pre-hospitalization HCQ will have any effect either. Applying a Bayesian analysis here, it's now likelier that the true ground truth is simply that HCQ doesn't do anything to COVID-19 at all, not necessarily that it works only in a narrow early window. HCQ has severe side effects too, that require close monitoring and can be fatal. If it's not clearly doing good then it definitely shouldn't be being given to COVID-19 patients. Personally, my hopes are more on remdesivir and favipiravir, both of which are actual antivirals (HCQ is not) and thus were always more promising. HCQ was never the most promising drug candidate, and the only reason we're even talking about it as much as we are is that, for whatever random reason, that's the one Trump heard about first and then fixated on.

Symmetry 6y ago
The study that made me think there might be something to it was looking at people taking it for unrelated illnesses and finding that they weren't tending to show up hospitalized with Covid-19. I'd agree that we really don't have any evidence that giving it to hospitalized patients helps at all. Most antivirals have to be taken at the early stages of an infection. The best looking treatment for people seriously ill with Covid-19 right now seems to be IL-6 inhibitors. That won't stop you from getting sick but might let you avoid intubation.
- CydeWeys 6y ago
  Good to know, I'll keep my eyes out on those studies as well.
- ModernMech 6y ago
  This could be correlation. People taking HCQ have autoimmune problems like lupus, and therefore would be more cautious and practicing social distancing earlier, therefore not getting infected in the first place. It also might be true that people who are agoraphobic shut ins are not contracting covid. But that doesn't tell us much about how covid interacts with agoraphobia.