6 ms·

What troubles me is that people politicized a potentially life-saving treatment. That's how dangerous our political climate has gotten. Orange man says HCQ good

What troubles me is that people politicized a potentially life-saving treatment. That's how dangerous our political climate has gotten. Orange man says HCQ good, but orange man bad therefore HCQ bad.

criddell 6y ago
Calling the President orange man makes you part of the problem, no?
- throwaway9482 6y ago
  Not OP but I don’t think so. He’s remarking on the phenomenon on how there’s a few people who have a strong bias against Trump and anything he touches
  - SpicyLemonZest 6y ago
    Sure, but he's doing it in a very inflammatory way. There are many alternative phrases which would have expressed the same idea without making it look like he's picking a fight.
- eplanit 6y ago
  "Orange man bad" is a meme or just shorthand to refer to anti-Trump bias. It's meant to be dismissive of it and is rather widely circulated.
javagram 6y ago
The issue was also that “orange man” was not basing his statements on any convincing evidence. However people across the world associate the prestige and respects of the POTUS office as conferring authority on his statements. They think he has access to sources of info they may not (His HCQ boosterism seems to have been based on tweets and watching Fox News cable hosts though, no inside info).
- foolfoolz 6y ago
  this is a stawman completely unrelated to the topic being posted
- lolbrels 6y ago
  I have always found it strange that some people think Trump just says these things of his own volition. As if the President of the United States wouldn't be advised by some very, if not the most intelligent people our country has to offer. I guess some would say the blind faith is dangerous but at the same time I look at it as being common sense that our President would not advise something that could potentially kill people.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - javagram 6y ago
    The POTUS is certainly advised by some very smart people but he has a mind of his own. Analysis of his tweets have shown they often match the programming of his favorite Fox News TV shows exactly. (A time stamped remark based on something he sees on fox, then an equal delay and a new Tweet based on programming a similar amount later in the show). This dynamic tension between the advice of experts and Fox News that Trump receives played out very visible in the HCQ saga where Dr. Fauci in the live press conferences kept trying to walk back Trump’s remarks in the same conferences. https://www.statnews.com/2020/03/20/trump-coronavirus-drug-just-a-feeling/ https://www.statnews.com/2020/03/20/trump-coronavirus-drug-j... > WASHINGTON — President Trump on Friday admitted that his enthusiasm for an antimalarial drug unproven as a coronavirus treatment was based largely on gut instinct, after an open disagreement with the nation’s top infectious disease expert at a White House press briefing. > When reporters asked Tony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, whether the drug hydroxychloroquine was effective at preventing coronavirus, he said simply: “The answer is no.” > But when Trump came back to the microphone, he told reporters that “we ought to give it a try.” > “I think we disagree a little bit,” Trump added. “I feel good about it. That’s all it is, just a feeling, you know, smart guy. I feel good about it.”
- 6y ago
Larrikin 6y ago
I think even in the hyper politicized climate were in most people will trust their elected officials. People have been listening to the governor's for the most part. There have just been too many lies and doubling down on the lies from the president. Everything needs to be independently verified and all the verification of HCQ outside of this retracted study showed that it either didn't help or actively harmed.
- stcredzero 6y ago
  all the verification of HCQ outside of this retracted study showed that it either didn't help or actively harmed False. Not all. There's a reason why people were hopeful. https://youtu.be/5i4BpTcBdrc?t=415 https://youtu.be/5i4BpTcBdrc?t=415 There are many more like this.
  - DanBC 6y ago
    On one side we have peer reviewed, published, studies showing it doesn't work and causes harm when used to treat Covid-19, and on the other side we have youtube videos talking about tweets from some bloke calling himself MD but who isn't working as a doctor, talking about a "study" performed in India that wasn't actually a study -- they were not monitoring the impact on the people taking it; they didn't attempt a control group; we have no idea if the people who declined it were high risk or not; etc etc.
    - jansan 6y ago
      > On one side we have peer reviewed, published, studies I don't think you fully caught the irony of what you just wrote.
    - lbeltrame 6y ago
      > On one side we have peer reviewed, published, studies showing it doesn't work and causes harm I understand the "doesn't work" at least when given late during the course of the disease (no idea when early, that's why we have RCTs to find out, otherwise it would be already done and deal), but causes harm? Aside the retracted study, even the deaths in the high dosage arm in the Brazil study, which prompted unmasking and lowered dosage, were defined "a statistically insignificant trend" (death is always serious, of course, but those words need to be taken into account). Unless by "causes harm" you mean for availability for treatment of other diseases, of course.
kevin_b_er 6y ago
"potentially" is the key word here I could argue it was politicized the moment that politician claimed it was the be-all and end-all and his frenzied supporters declared it to work. All lack of success in science by the drug has already been dismissed as a political attack. Heck, the pandemic itself has been dismissed as a political attack too. The bodies are dismissed as a political attack. And yet we still can't show the drug works. I worry excess attention on this drug due to politic pressure is distracting from exploring life-saving treatments that aren't this drug. There's an enormous pressure on science to deliver, and it has to actually prove it unlike the politicians.
- lbeltrame 6y ago
  > And yet we still can't show the drug works. There has been just one trial done properly to my knowledge, and that was published yesterday. And even that is just applied in a narrow case (post-exposure prophylaxis, modulo some important study limitations).
  - kevin_b_er 6y ago
    That one's being attacked as we speak for certain poor controls on testing. This could lead to a compromised dataset and invalidating the whole thing.
    - lbeltrame 6y ago
      Yes, I've read the limitations of the paper (after the Lancet debacle, I too learned my lesson and read a little more thoroughly). I believe it was done the best they could, given that UMN had to use very little money for it (~100K USD, as far as I understand). That's why IMO the limitations need to be fully read and understood. But I think it was done in good faith (unlike the Lancet study): the PI tried to his best to avoid spilling the beans until it was published to avoid sensationalism, and at the same time, he signed the open letter against the Lancet paper (after he sent the paper for review, so he knew the results already). Larger studies will likely be needed. It's clear that the effect size (if any exists) is quite small, like with remedisivir.
lutorm 6y ago
I don't know that it's political, per se, to observe that some people say stuff that most of the time seems unrelated to facts and thus acquire a behavior of discounting said people. Distrust can be earned regardless of politics.
qqqwerty 6y ago
This is a gross misrepresentation of what actually happened. A flawed study was published claiming HCQ was extremely effective. The right was clamoring to re-open the economy and started promoting HCQ as a miracle cure. Rational people pushed back, said the evidence was thin and more research was needed. The right accused those people of trying to sabotage the economy for political reasons.
- HeroOfAges 6y ago
  I don't think that's a gross misrepresentation from the point of view of the average person at all. The average consumer of news that has already staked a political position will ignore the nuance you pointed out in your comment. So yes, for liberals, a class of drugs that have been used for decades to safely and effectively treat a number of conditions is all of a sudden deadly.
  - qqqwerty 6y ago
    Which liberals? All of them? I highly doubt that. The vast majority of political leaders on the left have been highly deferential to health experts. I am sure you can find a stray tweet or two to support your narrative, but show me concrete examples of policy decisions by liberal leaders that were made regarding HCQ due to misinformation about its deadliness. Meanwhile, the Trump administration stockpiled HCQ and caused a run on supplies of the drug based on a flawed study. This put lupus patients at risk of not being able to access necessary medicine.
stonogo 6y ago
A better summary would "orange man not a medical researcher therefore HCQ needs evaluation." Your version of this summary is disingenuous and not in the spirit of Hacker News conversation, where we try to take the best possible interpretation of the conversation as it happens. There is no way to take the text "orange man bad" as anything but a petty dismissal of anyone who is not entirely supportive of a particular politician. People have interpreted a broad array of responses to Trump's advocacy to mean "orange man bad," from actual blind hatred to observations that full trials need to be put on to confirm effectiveness. I have no problem dismissing the former, but when calls for scientific rigor are met with "oh, you're just a Trump hater" we have a real problem -- in that the act of discovering a fact is now politically risky for anyone who suggests it. Fortunately in this case the publication process is working; the paper came out, was questioned, those questions were investigated, and it was determined the data was insufficiently open to defend the study, so it was retracted. Ask yourself what would have happened if a paper agreed with the president's assertions, but was based on faulty/unavailable data? Would anyone questioning the paper be met with "orange man bad" dismissals? What effect might that have on NIH/NSF-funded research, do you think?
manicdee 6y ago
A more accurate description is: politician with financial stake in HCQ and no medical background cherry picks the one study claiming HCQ can be used to treat COVID-19, but the study is a third-party review of unverifiable and highly questionable reports. There is no conspiracy here. The extraordinary claims regarding HCQ need extraordinary evidence, and that evidence is not available.

What troubles me is that people politicized a potentially life-saving treatment. That's how dangerous our political climate has gotten. Orange man says HCQ good, but orange man bad therefore HCQ bad.

criddell 6y ago

Calling the President orange man makes you part of the problem, no?

throwaway9482 6y ago
Not OP but I don’t think so. He’s remarking on the phenomenon on how there’s a few people who have a strong bias against Trump and anything he touches
- SpicyLemonZest 6y ago
  Sure, but he's doing it in a very inflammatory way. There are many alternative phrases which would have expressed the same idea without making it look like he's picking a fight.
eplanit 6y ago
"Orange man bad" is a meme or just shorthand to refer to anti-Trump bias. It's meant to be dismissive of it and is rather widely circulated.

javagram 6y ago

The issue was also that “orange man” was not basing his statements on any convincing evidence. However people across the world associate the prestige and respects of the POTUS office as conferring authority on his statements. They think he has access to sources of info they may not (His HCQ boosterism seems to have been based on tweets and watching Fox News cable hosts though, no inside info).

foolfoolz 6y ago
this is a stawman completely unrelated to the topic being posted
lolbrels 6y ago
I have always found it strange that some people think Trump just says these things of his own volition. As if the President of the United States wouldn't be advised by some very, if not the most intelligent people our country has to offer. I guess some would say the blind faith is dangerous but at the same time I look at it as being common sense that our President would not advise something that could potentially kill people.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- javagram 6y ago
  The POTUS is certainly advised by some very smart people but he has a mind of his own. Analysis of his tweets have shown they often match the programming of his favorite Fox News TV shows exactly. (A time stamped remark based on something he sees on fox, then an equal delay and a new Tweet based on programming a similar amount later in the show). This dynamic tension between the advice of experts and Fox News that Trump receives played out very visible in the HCQ saga where Dr. Fauci in the live press conferences kept trying to walk back Trump’s remarks in the same conferences. https://www.statnews.com/2020/03/20/trump-coronavirus-drug-just-a-feeling/ https://www.statnews.com/2020/03/20/trump-coronavirus-drug-j... > WASHINGTON — President Trump on Friday admitted that his enthusiasm for an antimalarial drug unproven as a coronavirus treatment was based largely on gut instinct, after an open disagreement with the nation’s top infectious disease expert at a White House press briefing. > When reporters asked Tony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, whether the drug hydroxychloroquine was effective at preventing coronavirus, he said simply: “The answer is no.” > But when Trump came back to the microphone, he told reporters that “we ought to give it a try.” > “I think we disagree a little bit,” Trump added. “I feel good about it. That’s all it is, just a feeling, you know, smart guy. I feel good about it.”
6y ago

Larrikin 6y ago

I think even in the hyper politicized climate were in most people will trust their elected officials. People have been listening to the governor's for the most part. There have just been too many lies and doubling down on the lies from the president. Everything needs to be independently verified and all the verification of HCQ outside of this retracted study showed that it either didn't help or actively harmed.

stcredzero 6y ago
all the verification of HCQ outside of this retracted study showed that it either didn't help or actively harmed False. Not all. There's a reason why people were hopeful. https://youtu.be/5i4BpTcBdrc?t=415 https://youtu.be/5i4BpTcBdrc?t=415 There are many more like this.
- DanBC 6y ago
  On one side we have peer reviewed, published, studies showing it doesn't work and causes harm when used to treat Covid-19, and on the other side we have youtube videos talking about tweets from some bloke calling himself MD but who isn't working as a doctor, talking about a "study" performed in India that wasn't actually a study -- they were not monitoring the impact on the people taking it; they didn't attempt a control group; we have no idea if the people who declined it were high risk or not; etc etc.
  - jansan 6y ago
    > On one side we have peer reviewed, published, studies I don't think you fully caught the irony of what you just wrote.
  - lbeltrame 6y ago
    > On one side we have peer reviewed, published, studies showing it doesn't work and causes harm I understand the "doesn't work" at least when given late during the course of the disease (no idea when early, that's why we have RCTs to find out, otherwise it would be already done and deal), but causes harm? Aside the retracted study, even the deaths in the high dosage arm in the Brazil study, which prompted unmasking and lowered dosage, were defined "a statistically insignificant trend" (death is always serious, of course, but those words need to be taken into account). Unless by "causes harm" you mean for availability for treatment of other diseases, of course.

kevin_b_er 6y ago

"potentially" is the key word here I could argue it was politicized the moment that politician claimed it was the be-all and end-all and his frenzied supporters declared it to work. All lack of success in science by the drug has already been dismissed as a political attack. Heck, the pandemic itself has been dismissed as a political attack too. The bodies are dismissed as a political attack. And yet we still can't show the drug works. I worry excess attention on this drug due to politic pressure is distracting from exploring life-saving treatments that aren't this drug. There's an enormous pressure on science to deliver, and it has to actually prove it unlike the politicians.

lbeltrame 6y ago
> And yet we still can't show the drug works. There has been just one trial done properly to my knowledge, and that was published yesterday. And even that is just applied in a narrow case (post-exposure prophylaxis, modulo some important study limitations).
- kevin_b_er 6y ago
  That one's being attacked as we speak for certain poor controls on testing. This could lead to a compromised dataset and invalidating the whole thing.
  - lbeltrame 6y ago
    Yes, I've read the limitations of the paper (after the Lancet debacle, I too learned my lesson and read a little more thoroughly). I believe it was done the best they could, given that UMN had to use very little money for it (~100K USD, as far as I understand). That's why IMO the limitations need to be fully read and understood. But I think it was done in good faith (unlike the Lancet study): the PI tried to his best to avoid spilling the beans until it was published to avoid sensationalism, and at the same time, he signed the open letter against the Lancet paper (after he sent the paper for review, so he knew the results already). Larger studies will likely be needed. It's clear that the effect size (if any exists) is quite small, like with remedisivir.

lutorm 6y ago

I don't know that it's political, per se, to observe that some people say stuff that most of the time seems unrelated to facts and thus acquire a behavior of discounting said people. Distrust can be earned regardless of politics.

qqqwerty 6y ago

This is a gross misrepresentation of what actually happened. A flawed study was published claiming HCQ was extremely effective. The right was clamoring to re-open the economy and started promoting HCQ as a miracle cure. Rational people pushed back, said the evidence was thin and more research was needed. The right accused those people of trying to sabotage the economy for political reasons.

HeroOfAges 6y ago
I don't think that's a gross misrepresentation from the point of view of the average person at all. The average consumer of news that has already staked a political position will ignore the nuance you pointed out in your comment. So yes, for liberals, a class of drugs that have been used for decades to safely and effectively treat a number of conditions is all of a sudden deadly.
- qqqwerty 6y ago
  Which liberals? All of them? I highly doubt that. The vast majority of political leaders on the left have been highly deferential to health experts. I am sure you can find a stray tweet or two to support your narrative, but show me concrete examples of policy decisions by liberal leaders that were made regarding HCQ due to misinformation about its deadliness. Meanwhile, the Trump administration stockpiled HCQ and caused a run on supplies of the drug based on a flawed study. This put lupus patients at risk of not being able to access necessary medicine.

stonogo 6y ago

A better summary would "orange man not a medical researcher therefore HCQ needs evaluation." Your version of this summary is disingenuous and not in the spirit of Hacker News conversation, where we try to take the best possible interpretation of the conversation as it happens. There is no way to take the text "orange man bad" as anything but a petty dismissal of anyone who is not entirely supportive of a particular politician. People have interpreted a broad array of responses to Trump's advocacy to mean "orange man bad," from actual blind hatred to observations that full trials need to be put on to confirm effectiveness. I have no problem dismissing the former, but when calls for scientific rigor are met with "oh, you're just a Trump hater" we have a real problem -- in that the act of discovering a fact is now politically risky for anyone who suggests it. Fortunately in this case the publication process is working; the paper came out, was questioned, those questions were investigated, and it was determined the data was insufficiently open to defend the study, so it was retracted. Ask yourself what would have happened if a paper agreed with the president's assertions, but was based on faulty/unavailable data? Would anyone questioning the paper be met with "orange man bad" dismissals? What effect might that have on NIH/NSF-funded research, do you think?

manicdee 6y ago

A more accurate description is: politician with financial stake in HCQ and no medical background cherry picks the one study claiming HCQ can be used to treat COVID-19, but the study is a third-party review of unverifiable and highly questionable reports. There is no conspiracy here. The extraordinary claims regarding HCQ need extraordinary evidence, and that evidence is not available.