9 ms·

U.S. Stockpiled 63M Now-Useless Doses of Hydroxychloroquine

70 points by justin66 6y ago

birdyrooster 6y ago
The title belies the truth that those doses of hydroxychloroquine were and are still not useless. It is used to treat Lupus and other conditions. The stockpiling caused prices at one point to nearly double and created shortage for people with disabilities. This needs to be considered beyond the obvious material waste. How many people need to be hurt before accountability is finally laid upon the leadership of this nation? Edit: https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2020/05/23/hydroxychloroquine-short-supply-lupus-patients-who-need/5245542002/ https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2020/05/23/hydroxychloro...
- mlyle 6y ago
  Huge amounts of the hydroxychloroquine debacle were dubious-- public statements about efficacy, broken early trials, etc. But: in March, it was one of very few leads on a treatment. Building some degree of a strategic stockpile and ensuring that manufacturing was increased made sense, even if it was a long shot. It's unfortunate that this had a negative effect upon people, but if there had been efficacy having that stockpile would have been extremely beneficial.
  - osrec 6y ago
    Did they stockpile remdesivir in the same quantities, given its actual efficacy?
    - dumbfoundded 6y ago
      No, President Trump didn't hold any shares of the manufacturers. The company behind its production is donating its stockpile to the US Government: https://www.forbes.com/sites/alexandrasternlicht/2020/05/03/entire-stockpile-of-coronavirus-treatment-remdesivir-donated-to-government-says-ceo/#6c7576ea725f https://www.forbes.com/sites/alexandrasternlicht/2020/05/03/...
      - bioinformatics 6y ago
        You only watch CNN too?
        makomk 6y ago
        Wrong mainstream news outlet. The stupid conspiracy theory about Trump pushing hydroxychloroquine because he owned shares in its manufacturer was mostly the New York Times' doing. (This lead to the rather unusual spectacle of Snopes debunking a nonsensical online conspiracy theory pushed by the NYT... and there was plenty wrong with it, from the utterly miniscule size of Trump's indirect shareholding via a mutual fund to the low amount of money to be made from it to the fact that apparently that company was no longer selling it in the US anyway, some of which the NYT were clearly aware of.)
    - bioinformatics 6y ago
      remdesivir is a quite new drug and really hard to manufacture. Also HCQ is a very old drug, created on WWII and really easy to manufacture.
    - adventured 6y ago
      They're very different contexts. Gilead doesn't have such a large stockpile or production capability for Remdesivir. Everything Gilead had was turned over to the government. From May 3rd: "Gilead CEO says remdesivir will be available to patients this week: ‘We’ve donated the entire supply’" "Gilead expects to produce more than 140,000 rounds of its 10-day treatment regimen by the end of May and anticipates it can make 1 million rounds by the end of this year." https://www.cnbc.com/2020/05/03/gilead-ceo-says-remdesivir-available-to-coronavirus-patients-this-week-weve-donated-the-entire-supply.html https://www.cnbc.com/2020/05/03/gilead-ceo-says-remdesivir-a...
    - mc32 6y ago
      That one is difficult to manufacture, so the effort necessary would be much higher.
    - ars 6y ago
      Between 2006 and 2014 we spent FAR FAR more money stockpiling Tamiflu which does absolutely nothing. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-roche-hldg-novartis-search/stockpiles-of-roche-tamiflu-drug-are-waste-of-money-review-finds-idUSBREA390EJ20140410 https://www.reuters.com/article/us-roche-hldg-novartis-searc...
    - pnutjam 6y ago
      Did they stockpile PPE? It's proven effective for this pandemic and many other situations; however the feds let the stockpile dwindle for no good reason.
      - thu2111 6y ago
        I thought the jury was still out on masks at least. The WHO keeps changing its mind about them, as do other governments.
        pnutjam 6y ago
        It's not, nobody is changing their mind. There were some efforts to reserve masks for front line medical workers. That muddied the issue, but masks protect you from spreading a sickness you may now know you have and provide a minimal amount of protection from catching covid-19.
        thu2111 6y ago
        Nobody is changing their mind? That's obviously nonsense. There have been so many reversals it made the news. https://nypost.com/2020/06/06/who-reverses-position-on-face-masks-as-coronavirus-cases-climb/ https://nypost.com/2020/06/06/who-reverses-position-on-face-... Different authorities can't even agree: https://abcnews.go.com/Health/cdc-offer-conflicting-advice-masks-expert-tells-us/story?id=70958380 https://abcnews.go.com/Health/cdc-offer-conflicting-advice-m... The mask situation is absurd, one more failure on top of so many others for the global health establishment.
        pnutjam 6y ago
        Wrong! https://www.cnn.com/videos/health/2020/06/23/anthony-fauci-masks-question-vpx.cnn https://www.cnn.com/videos/health/2020/06/23/anthony-fauci-m... The masks were alway recommended to slow transmission.
        thu2111 6y ago
  - tom_mellior 6y ago
    It was never a lead. The first study pushing it was immediately recognized as broken. No better evidence ever came along. No plausible mechanism of action was proposed.
    - iguy 6y ago
      Maybe this was clear to some, but lots of people thought it worthwhile to fund trials. To me 63M doses of a cheap drug sounds like a really small bet. We should be willing to make lots of them, on the slightest hope, knowing that most will be wasted. Get 50 experts and fund anything which gets 2 votes.
      - justin66 6y ago
        > Maybe this was clear to some, but lots of people thought it worthwhile to fund trials. "A lot of people are saying..."
        iguy 6y ago
        A policy of funding a domestic trial of anything which anyone else is trying anywhere in the world wouldn't be crazy, actually. We're not trying to only make safe bets; the cost of not having a solution is 1000 deaths a day.
        justin66 6y ago
        > A policy of funding a domestic trial of anything which anyone else is trying anywhere in the world wouldn't be crazy, actually. It seems rather crazy to me, but perhaps more importantly, it is a strategy that - implemented literally - would result in the US leadership being very easily led by others "anywhere in the world" in matters of drug research, a situation which would be very amenable to manipulation for profit. That's obviously wrong. We want the US leadership to be very easily led by Fox News personalities and whatever is popping on Twitter.
      - sharkmerry 6y ago
        I think the issue was, as another commenter stated, it has current uses for patients and the price almost doubled. So people had shortages or couldnt afford needed medicine. because of a (apparently) dubious study
  - gsibble 6y ago
    My point exactly. Made total sense to stockpile it.
  - cm2187 6y ago
    And we are about to do exactly the same thing with vaccines, to preemptively produce them before we even know they are safe or useful.
  - trhway 6y ago
    >if there had been efficacy there have been efficacy all along against lupus/etc. Yet ephemeral unproven chance of efficacy against coronavirus was chosen over well known benefit for the already suffering people. That looks extremely illogical and kind of cruel to me. Not surprising though given that it isn't logic nor compassion that drives the government actions these days.
    - mlyle 6y ago
      Unproven chance of reducing mortality and reducing overload on critical health care system was chosen against well known disease management with multiple alternative drugs. Not that even this was intended, but it's unsurprising that efforts to stockpile and allocate supplies don't work perfectly.
  - SomeoneFromCA 6y ago
    Central Asian countries, Uzbekistan in particular uses chloroquine (not hydroxy) to treat Covid patients. The official sources are highly unreliable, but overall the death rate is very low, even if you multiply it by 100.
    - rpiguy 6y ago
      Same in Bangladesh and other countries.
- e40 6y ago
  Not just that. People in CA with lupus (husband of a coworker) were told (by Kaiser) they would no longer be able to get the drug, which is very important to their health. Really disgusting how this whole thing played out.
  - postnihilism 6y ago
    I have an immediate family member with rheumatoid arthritis who struggled to fill their prescription through Kaiser because of this as well. It caused a lot of stress in my family. If they were unable to fill their prescription and had complications as a result, they may have needed to go to the hospital, which is not something you want to in the middle of a pandemic when you have an autoimmune disease...
    - tzs 6y ago
      OT: Does anyone know of a good way to find out what a drug will cost at a Kaiser pharmacy on a Kaiser insurance plan? I've got Kaiser and the pharmacy is unable (or unwilling) to tell me, given a drug, dosage, quantity, and my Kaiser ID how much it will cost unless I actually try to have the prescription filled there. For some drugs, Kaiser is the way to go. Lipitor, e.g., is free. For some, taking the prescription elsewhere and using a GoodRx coupon instead of insurance is better. E.g., irbesartan is $46 for 90 days mail order via Kaiser (mail order is cheaper than in-person), but only $22-31 at several other well known pharmacies with a GoodRx coupon. I've heard that if you get a printed prescription from your Kaiser doctor, instead of having the doctor send the prescription electronically to a pharmacy, you can take the printed prescription and your Kaiser card to the Kaiser pharmacy and then they will tell you what it would cost without you having to actually have it filled to find that out, but I've not had a chance to try this to see if it is true.
      - e40 6y ago
        HR reports to me and my HR person is very good and uses Kaiser a lot for expensive meds. She's never found a way to do what you want, either for herself or for our employees.
- mirimir 6y ago
  It's also popular for arthritis. And there are mechanisms for getting meds back into the pharma distribution system. Some small wholesalers specialize in stock from failed pharmacies, and even from fire sales.
- logicslave 6y ago
  Thinly veiled political agenda
  - iso-8859-1 6y ago
    Those are some adjectives and a noun. What are you implying? Do you not think that birdyrooster is insightful?
    - logicslave 6y ago
      I've got better things to do than argue, but this website needs to be shielded from this. Please take it to twitter
      - iso-8859-1 6y ago
        The Twitter character limit prohibits going in depth. That is the opposite of what I am looking for. Also, the lack of threading discourages having branches of discussion for the lesser important points.
throwawaysea 6y ago
Are they actually useless? I recall there was substantial controversy around studies not specifically pairing Hydroxychloroquine along with Zinc, which is needed for it to be effective. I think https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.05.02.20080036v1 https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.05.02.20080036v... was one of the few studies that specifically incorporated zinc. Does anyone know where that line of scientific study ended up?
- adrr 6y ago
  FDA pulled emergency authorization after looking at all the studies.
  - garmaine 6y ago
    Which turned out to be bogus (outright fraud, probably) and retracted days later. But the FDA hasn’t reversed...
    - dajohnson89 6y ago
      what's the motive for fraudulently rejecting hydroxychloroquine here?
      - walterbell 6y ago
        HCQ is generic and sells for less than $10. Newer treatments are often more than $1000.
        adrr 6y ago
        Are you saying the FDA is corrupt? If so are you going to hold the president accountable as the leader of executive branch? Just curious.
        garmaine 6y ago
        Not the FDA, the organization which published the flawed study.
chrisco255 6y ago
Note, there are still 134 active clinical trials to study the effects of HCQ (+ other supplements) on Covid-19: https://www.clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/results?cond=Hydroxychloroquine+covid-19&term=&cntry=&state=&city=&dist= https://www.clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/results?cond=Hydroxychlor... A group of physicians is suing the FDA for limiting access to drug: https://www.channelnewsasia.com/news/world/doctors-fda-access-drug-hydroxychloroquine-covid-19-coronavirus-12806194 https://www.channelnewsasia.com/news/world/doctors-fda-acces...
- aaronbrethorst 6y ago
  The AAPS, a non-profit organisation based in Tucson, Arizona, has a "few thousand" members, according to executive director Jane Orient. It opposes mandatory vaccination, previously waged a campaign against healthcare reforms introduced by former President Barack Obama, and has been pushing back against state restrictions on use of hydroxychloroquine as a preventive therapy for the coronavirus. The organization's general counsel is Andrew Schlafly, the son of Phyllis Schlafly, who is pretty well-summed-up by these quotes: https://www.cnn.com/2016/09/06/politics/phyllis-schlafly-quotes/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2016/09/06/politics/phyllis-schlafly-quo...
  - vernie 6y ago
    Okay?
olliej 6y ago
its useful for the people who needed it before their access to it was drastically limited by hoarding.
- thrill 6y ago
  Hoarding? It is available in the US by prescription only. The only hoarding that could occur is by the people best qualified to control its use - medical professionals. The government screwed that up too by trying to prevent them from prescribing the medication unless the government approved. The artificial shortage of this drug came from clueless politicians and media promoting its unproven effectiveness causing an unnecessary spike in demand.
  - olliej 6y ago
    and the government started consuming supplies, and doctors started prescribing it in bulk for friends and family who had no need. Meanwhile people who did actually need it because, you know, actual reasons, suddenly found that there was none available anywhere. So large groups of people were buying up the supply, without any actual need for themselves. That's hoarding. It's even worse though, because they can't return those drugs, so yay!
CyanLite2 6y ago
Something good could still come out of this. The gov't should "donate" these doses to millions of lupus and RA patients. But nah, that'd be considered socialism.... /s
- JKCalhoun 6y ago
  I wonder if the doses have expiration dates. I assume so. Hopefully dumpsters won't be full of expired HCq....
vmception 6y ago
Has anybody else pivoted to supplying these dysfunctional governments with this and other crap? It really feels like I've been playing Death Stranding for the past few months
- ars 6y ago
  Dysfunction government is nothing new, spent billions between 2006 and 2014 stockpiling Tamiflu which doesn't even do anything: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-roche-hldg-novartis-search/stockpiles-of-roche-tamiflu-drug-are-waste-of-money-review-finds-idUSBREA390EJ20140410 https://www.reuters.com/article/us-roche-hldg-novartis-searc...
zaroth 6y ago
The US is doing something similar with vaccine candidates. Kickstarting massive production before the trials complete so that if it works the doses are ready to go. BARDA is awarding grants like $483 million to Moderna to start manufacturing even if the vaccine is never approved. It may be totally appropriate for the government to make multi-billion dollar speculative investments in therapies that could help us more quickly restart the economy, the closing of which is costing trillions of dollars. These investments, like all central planning approaches, will distort the free market and likely cause a misallocation of resources. For example more work on COVID therapies at the expense of cancer therapies which could ultimately lead to more deaths overall. But the cost of the shutdown dwarfs all of that, so basically anything that could expedite full reopening is worth the risk. When disaster preparedness pays off everyone feels great. When disaster preparedness that doesn’t pay off is ridiculed as wasted investment, we get situations like we had with the National Stockpile, and what happened in CA with their disbanded disaster response field hospitals. We need to accept the government wasting money in disaster preparedness if we want to ever actually be prepared. Otherwise it’s like complaining about the insurance premium because the house didn’t burn down.
- refurb 6y ago
  We need to accept the government wasting money in disaster preparedness if we want to ever actually be prepared. Yup! I hear people ask "Why weren't we ready for Covid?". Then in the next breath ask "Why are we stockpiling a drug that doesn't work for Covid?".
  - pstuart 6y ago
    > I hear people ask "Why weren't we ready for Covid?". Then in the next breath ask "Why are we stockpiling a drug that doesn't work for Covid?". It doesn't work that way.
    - refurb 6y ago
      Sure it does. If you want to prepared for an epidemic, you have to accept that you’re going to waste money. And at any rate, I know the gov’t has deals with pharma companies. They’ll often swap expired product so the stockpile stays current.
gsibble 6y ago
We're also making hundreds of millions of doses of vaccines that may not work just like HCQ. Is that dumb? I certainly don't think so. It's a fast moving situation and if something MAY show promise, it makes sense to obtain a ton of it. Stop trying to make an issue out of nothing.
cgb223 6y ago
It’s better to have a stockpile of things that might work than to not have a stockpile of something if it’s revealed to work and suddenly there’s a scramble for that resource. Think PPE, potential treatments, Ventilators
- digsy 6y ago
  PPE, potential treatments, Ventilators have all been proven to work for their intended purposes. Thats why we stockpile them. Stockpiling something in the hopes that it might help is a waste of resources.
  - ikerdanzel 6y ago
    Widely known and used in Eastern Asia side. You need to have friends in medical fields from that region to know. The western side is basically disinformation itself because of democratic-republican tussle during current year election agenda. Western countries mortality are significant higher in those countries choosing to not use it. I suggest you contact any of your friends working in medical fields working in Eastern Asian side to know a clearer picture.
  - akvadrako 6y ago
    It isn’t true that ventilators are proven to be useful against Covid; at least the evidence is consistent that hcq being more effective. Also ventilators are very expensive and hcq is very cheap.
Mizza 6y ago
I find it disgusting how politicized this particular drug became. I think people really decided that it was either useless or miraculous simply because of Trump's excitment about it. There was a period of time in March when this was an early leading candidate for treatment and the government acted proactively. I don't think this was a bad decision, even if it was incorrect in hindsight.
- non-entity 6y ago
  > I find it disgusting how politicized this particular drug became. I cant fucking stand this type of shit anymore. No critical thinking, just attach some initial opinion about something based on how its been politicized and never think about it again. It's either Trump is God is said ots good so it's good, or Trump is the devil and said it's bad so its bad. Then just dismiss any sort potential evidence to contrary as propaganda / conspiracy / etc. Wish there was was away to get away from it.
  - sundbry 6y ago
    This is the democrazy we chose. It's not going to last very much longer. It is nearly impossible to make rational, level-headed decisions. Federalist 10 was prophetic.
- ciarannolan 6y ago
  It highlights the importance of good leadership, which in this case does not happen to include going on TV and blabbering about drugs you know nothing about. If the president was able to keep his mouth shut these HQ studies could have continued uninterrupted and the conversation around HQ wouldn't be such a political mess.
  - cm2187 6y ago
    In other words it is not the fault of the people who are trying to kill a molecule just because they don’t like Trump?
    - 6y ago
nnx 6y ago
Useless for what? That HCQ is useless for severe cases where patient require artificial ventilation is nothing new, it has been highlighted by scientific HCQ proponents from the beginning (eg. see Pr Raoult studies, Spain prophylaxis trial for medical staff, ...). Severe cases are not overwhelmed by the virus but by their own immune system response... in fact there is a lower viral load during the lethal phase of the disease. Where HCQ might be useful is for prophylaxis or in early phase of the disease to quickly reduce viral load (therefore infectivity). In this setting, plenty studies are still ongoing and positive results are visible in multiple afaik.
- SomeoneFromCA 6y ago
  Central Asia (Uzbekistan in particular) uses (not-hydroxy-but-good-old-plain) chloroquine to treat Covid. Death rate is low, lowest in the world actually. You cannot trust the numbers though.
- tim333 6y ago
  It's interesting in Raoult's results that they treated 3320 patients with 18 deaths or about 0.5% and you can say ok thats quite low but maybe they were young and healthy. However if you look at the age of the deaths there zero deaths under age 60 and one under 70. It seems unlikely for that to happen if the treatment did nothing. Apparently without treatment deaths under 60 are something like 20% of the total usually. (him talking about it in French https://youtu.be/Sc1-JBX2y70?t=268 https://youtu.be/Sc1-JBX2y70?t=268) I can't help but feel when historians look back on this that they will figure there were unnecessary deaths due to political biases.
pcvarmint 6y ago
Hydroxychloroquine can prevent cytokine cascade, which fills the lungs and can cause pneumonia. It should be doctor and patient's choice whether to use it. The Lancet was forced to retract an article critical of hydroxychloroquine, dubbed "LancetGate". [1] [2] [3] [1] https://audioboom.com/posts/7605833-lancetgate-illustrates-science-distorted-by-anti-trump-partisanship-what-is-to-be-done-richar https://audioboom.com/posts/7605833-lancetgate-illustrates-s... [2] https://www.hoover.org/research/lancets-covid-fiasco https://www.hoover.org/research/lancets-covid-fiasco [3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8hhhG61Lx2E https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8hhhG61Lx2E
tgafpc2 6y ago
Not useless at all. Still given off label under the supervision of a doctor. Still studies going on. The big 'study' was retracted. Could still be part of several treatment plans.

70 points by justin66 6y ago

The title belies the truth that those doses of hydroxychloroquine were and are still not useless. It is used to treat Lupus and other conditions. The stockpiling caused prices at one point to nearly double and created shortage for people with disabilities. This needs to be considered beyond the obvious material waste. How many people need to be hurt before accountability is finally laid upon the leadership of this nation? Edit: https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2020/05/23/hydroxychloroquine-short-supply-lupus-patients-who-need/5245542002/ https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2020/05/23/hydroxychloro...

mlyle 6y ago
Huge amounts of the hydroxychloroquine debacle were dubious-- public statements about efficacy, broken early trials, etc. But: in March, it was one of very few leads on a treatment. Building some degree of a strategic stockpile and ensuring that manufacturing was increased made sense, even if it was a long shot. It's unfortunate that this had a negative effect upon people, but if there had been efficacy having that stockpile would have been extremely beneficial.
- osrec 6y ago
  Did they stockpile remdesivir in the same quantities, given its actual efficacy?
  - dumbfoundded 6y ago
    No, President Trump didn't hold any shares of the manufacturers. The company behind its production is donating its stockpile to the US Government: https://www.forbes.com/sites/alexandrasternlicht/2020/05/03/entire-stockpile-of-coronavirus-treatment-remdesivir-donated-to-government-says-ceo/#6c7576ea725f https://www.forbes.com/sites/alexandrasternlicht/2020/05/03/...
    - bioinformatics 6y ago
      You only watch CNN too?
      - makomk 6y ago
        Wrong mainstream news outlet. The stupid conspiracy theory about Trump pushing hydroxychloroquine because he owned shares in its manufacturer was mostly the New York Times' doing. (This lead to the rather unusual spectacle of Snopes debunking a nonsensical online conspiracy theory pushed by the NYT... and there was plenty wrong with it, from the utterly miniscule size of Trump's indirect shareholding via a mutual fund to the low amount of money to be made from it to the fact that apparently that company was no longer selling it in the US anyway, some of which the NYT were clearly aware of.)
  - bioinformatics 6y ago
    remdesivir is a quite new drug and really hard to manufacture. Also HCQ is a very old drug, created on WWII and really easy to manufacture.
  - adventured 6y ago
    They're very different contexts. Gilead doesn't have such a large stockpile or production capability for Remdesivir. Everything Gilead had was turned over to the government. From May 3rd: "Gilead CEO says remdesivir will be available to patients this week: ‘We’ve donated the entire supply’" "Gilead expects to produce more than 140,000 rounds of its 10-day treatment regimen by the end of May and anticipates it can make 1 million rounds by the end of this year." https://www.cnbc.com/2020/05/03/gilead-ceo-says-remdesivir-available-to-coronavirus-patients-this-week-weve-donated-the-entire-supply.html https://www.cnbc.com/2020/05/03/gilead-ceo-says-remdesivir-a...
  - mc32 6y ago
    That one is difficult to manufacture, so the effort necessary would be much higher.
  - ars 6y ago
    Between 2006 and 2014 we spent FAR FAR more money stockpiling Tamiflu which does absolutely nothing. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-roche-hldg-novartis-search/stockpiles-of-roche-tamiflu-drug-are-waste-of-money-review-finds-idUSBREA390EJ20140410 https://www.reuters.com/article/us-roche-hldg-novartis-searc...
  - pnutjam 6y ago
    Did they stockpile PPE? It's proven effective for this pandemic and many other situations; however the feds let the stockpile dwindle for no good reason.
    - thu2111 6y ago
      I thought the jury was still out on masks at least. The WHO keeps changing its mind about them, as do other governments.
      - pnutjam 6y ago
        It's not, nobody is changing their mind. There were some efforts to reserve masks for front line medical workers. That muddied the issue, but masks protect you from spreading a sickness you may now know you have and provide a minimal amount of protection from catching covid-19.
        thu2111 6y ago
        Nobody is changing their mind? That's obviously nonsense. There have been so many reversals it made the news. https://nypost.com/2020/06/06/who-reverses-position-on-face-masks-as-coronavirus-cases-climb/ https://nypost.com/2020/06/06/who-reverses-position-on-face-... Different authorities can't even agree: https://abcnews.go.com/Health/cdc-offer-conflicting-advice-masks-expert-tells-us/story?id=70958380 https://abcnews.go.com/Health/cdc-offer-conflicting-advice-m... The mask situation is absurd, one more failure on top of so many others for the global health establishment.
        pnutjam 6y ago
        Wrong! https://www.cnn.com/videos/health/2020/06/23/anthony-fauci-masks-question-vpx.cnn https://www.cnn.com/videos/health/2020/06/23/anthony-fauci-m... The masks were alway recommended to slow transmission.
        thu2111 6y ago
- tom_mellior 6y ago
  It was never a lead. The first study pushing it was immediately recognized as broken. No better evidence ever came along. No plausible mechanism of action was proposed.
  - iguy 6y ago
    Maybe this was clear to some, but lots of people thought it worthwhile to fund trials. To me 63M doses of a cheap drug sounds like a really small bet. We should be willing to make lots of them, on the slightest hope, knowing that most will be wasted. Get 50 experts and fund anything which gets 2 votes.
    - justin66 6y ago
      > Maybe this was clear to some, but lots of people thought it worthwhile to fund trials. "A lot of people are saying..."
      - iguy 6y ago
        A policy of funding a domestic trial of anything which anyone else is trying anywhere in the world wouldn't be crazy, actually. We're not trying to only make safe bets; the cost of not having a solution is 1000 deaths a day.
        justin66 6y ago
        > A policy of funding a domestic trial of anything which anyone else is trying anywhere in the world wouldn't be crazy, actually. It seems rather crazy to me, but perhaps more importantly, it is a strategy that - implemented literally - would result in the US leadership being very easily led by others "anywhere in the world" in matters of drug research, a situation which would be very amenable to manipulation for profit. That's obviously wrong. We want the US leadership to be very easily led by Fox News personalities and whatever is popping on Twitter.
    - sharkmerry 6y ago
      I think the issue was, as another commenter stated, it has current uses for patients and the price almost doubled. So people had shortages or couldnt afford needed medicine. because of a (apparently) dubious study
- gsibble 6y ago
  My point exactly. Made total sense to stockpile it.
- cm2187 6y ago
  And we are about to do exactly the same thing with vaccines, to preemptively produce them before we even know they are safe or useful.
- trhway 6y ago
  >if there had been efficacy there have been efficacy all along against lupus/etc. Yet ephemeral unproven chance of efficacy against coronavirus was chosen over well known benefit for the already suffering people. That looks extremely illogical and kind of cruel to me. Not surprising though given that it isn't logic nor compassion that drives the government actions these days.
  - mlyle 6y ago
    Unproven chance of reducing mortality and reducing overload on critical health care system was chosen against well known disease management with multiple alternative drugs. Not that even this was intended, but it's unsurprising that efforts to stockpile and allocate supplies don't work perfectly.
- SomeoneFromCA 6y ago
  Central Asian countries, Uzbekistan in particular uses chloroquine (not hydroxy) to treat Covid patients. The official sources are highly unreliable, but overall the death rate is very low, even if you multiply it by 100.
  - rpiguy 6y ago
    Same in Bangladesh and other countries.
e40 6y ago
Not just that. People in CA with lupus (husband of a coworker) were told (by Kaiser) they would no longer be able to get the drug, which is very important to their health. Really disgusting how this whole thing played out.
- postnihilism 6y ago
  I have an immediate family member with rheumatoid arthritis who struggled to fill their prescription through Kaiser because of this as well. It caused a lot of stress in my family. If they were unable to fill their prescription and had complications as a result, they may have needed to go to the hospital, which is not something you want to in the middle of a pandemic when you have an autoimmune disease...
  - tzs 6y ago
    OT: Does anyone know of a good way to find out what a drug will cost at a Kaiser pharmacy on a Kaiser insurance plan? I've got Kaiser and the pharmacy is unable (or unwilling) to tell me, given a drug, dosage, quantity, and my Kaiser ID how much it will cost unless I actually try to have the prescription filled there. For some drugs, Kaiser is the way to go. Lipitor, e.g., is free. For some, taking the prescription elsewhere and using a GoodRx coupon instead of insurance is better. E.g., irbesartan is $46 for 90 days mail order via Kaiser (mail order is cheaper than in-person), but only $22-31 at several other well known pharmacies with a GoodRx coupon. I've heard that if you get a printed prescription from your Kaiser doctor, instead of having the doctor send the prescription electronically to a pharmacy, you can take the printed prescription and your Kaiser card to the Kaiser pharmacy and then they will tell you what it would cost without you having to actually have it filled to find that out, but I've not had a chance to try this to see if it is true.
    - e40 6y ago
      HR reports to me and my HR person is very good and uses Kaiser a lot for expensive meds. She's never found a way to do what you want, either for herself or for our employees.
mirimir 6y ago
It's also popular for arthritis. And there are mechanisms for getting meds back into the pharma distribution system. Some small wholesalers specialize in stock from failed pharmacies, and even from fire sales.
logicslave 6y ago
Thinly veiled political agenda
- iso-8859-1 6y ago
  Those are some adjectives and a noun. What are you implying? Do you not think that birdyrooster is insightful?
  - logicslave 6y ago
    I've got better things to do than argue, but this website needs to be shielded from this. Please take it to twitter
    - iso-8859-1 6y ago
      The Twitter character limit prohibits going in depth. That is the opposite of what I am looking for. Also, the lack of threading discourages having branches of discussion for the lesser important points.

throwawaysea 6y ago

Are they actually useless? I recall there was substantial controversy around studies not specifically pairing Hydroxychloroquine along with Zinc, which is needed for it to be effective. I think https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.05.02.20080036v1 https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.05.02.20080036v... was one of the few studies that specifically incorporated zinc. Does anyone know where that line of scientific study ended up?

adrr 6y ago
FDA pulled emergency authorization after looking at all the studies.
- garmaine 6y ago
  Which turned out to be bogus (outright fraud, probably) and retracted days later. But the FDA hasn’t reversed...
  - dajohnson89 6y ago
    what's the motive for fraudulently rejecting hydroxychloroquine here?
    - walterbell 6y ago
      HCQ is generic and sells for less than $10. Newer treatments are often more than $1000.
      - adrr 6y ago
        Are you saying the FDA is corrupt? If so are you going to hold the president accountable as the leader of executive branch? Just curious.
        garmaine 6y ago
        Not the FDA, the organization which published the flawed study.

chrisco255 6y ago

Note, there are still 134 active clinical trials to study the effects of HCQ (+ other supplements) on Covid-19: https://www.clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/results?cond=Hydroxychloroquine+covid-19&term=&cntry=&state=&city=&dist= https://www.clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/results?cond=Hydroxychlor... A group of physicians is suing the FDA for limiting access to drug: https://www.channelnewsasia.com/news/world/doctors-fda-access-drug-hydroxychloroquine-covid-19-coronavirus-12806194 https://www.channelnewsasia.com/news/world/doctors-fda-acces...

aaronbrethorst 6y ago
The AAPS, a non-profit organisation based in Tucson, Arizona, has a "few thousand" members, according to executive director Jane Orient. It opposes mandatory vaccination, previously waged a campaign against healthcare reforms introduced by former President Barack Obama, and has been pushing back against state restrictions on use of hydroxychloroquine as a preventive therapy for the coronavirus. The organization's general counsel is Andrew Schlafly, the son of Phyllis Schlafly, who is pretty well-summed-up by these quotes: https://www.cnn.com/2016/09/06/politics/phyllis-schlafly-quotes/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2016/09/06/politics/phyllis-schlafly-quo...
- vernie 6y ago
  Okay?

olliej 6y ago

its useful for the people who needed it before their access to it was drastically limited by hoarding.

thrill 6y ago
Hoarding? It is available in the US by prescription only. The only hoarding that could occur is by the people best qualified to control its use - medical professionals. The government screwed that up too by trying to prevent them from prescribing the medication unless the government approved. The artificial shortage of this drug came from clueless politicians and media promoting its unproven effectiveness causing an unnecessary spike in demand.
- olliej 6y ago
  and the government started consuming supplies, and doctors started prescribing it in bulk for friends and family who had no need. Meanwhile people who did actually need it because, you know, actual reasons, suddenly found that there was none available anywhere. So large groups of people were buying up the supply, without any actual need for themselves. That's hoarding. It's even worse though, because they can't return those drugs, so yay!

CyanLite2 6y ago

Something good could still come out of this. The gov't should "donate" these doses to millions of lupus and RA patients. But nah, that'd be considered socialism.... /s

JKCalhoun 6y ago
I wonder if the doses have expiration dates. I assume so. Hopefully dumpsters won't be full of expired HCq....

vmception 6y ago

Has anybody else pivoted to supplying these dysfunctional governments with this and other crap? It really feels like I've been playing Death Stranding for the past few months

ars 6y ago
Dysfunction government is nothing new, spent billions between 2006 and 2014 stockpiling Tamiflu which doesn't even do anything: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-roche-hldg-novartis-search/stockpiles-of-roche-tamiflu-drug-are-waste-of-money-review-finds-idUSBREA390EJ20140410 https://www.reuters.com/article/us-roche-hldg-novartis-searc...

zaroth 6y ago

The US is doing something similar with vaccine candidates. Kickstarting massive production before the trials complete so that if it works the doses are ready to go. BARDA is awarding grants like $483 million to Moderna to start manufacturing even if the vaccine is never approved. It may be totally appropriate for the government to make multi-billion dollar speculative investments in therapies that could help us more quickly restart the economy, the closing of which is costing trillions of dollars. These investments, like all central planning approaches, will distort the free market and likely cause a misallocation of resources. For example more work on COVID therapies at the expense of cancer therapies which could ultimately lead to more deaths overall. But the cost of the shutdown dwarfs all of that, so basically anything that could expedite full reopening is worth the risk. When disaster preparedness pays off everyone feels great. When disaster preparedness that doesn’t pay off is ridiculed as wasted investment, we get situations like we had with the National Stockpile, and what happened in CA with their disbanded disaster response field hospitals. We need to accept the government wasting money in disaster preparedness if we want to ever actually be prepared. Otherwise it’s like complaining about the insurance premium because the house didn’t burn down.

refurb 6y ago
We need to accept the government wasting money in disaster preparedness if we want to ever actually be prepared. Yup! I hear people ask "Why weren't we ready for Covid?". Then in the next breath ask "Why are we stockpiling a drug that doesn't work for Covid?".
- pstuart 6y ago
  > I hear people ask "Why weren't we ready for Covid?". Then in the next breath ask "Why are we stockpiling a drug that doesn't work for Covid?". It doesn't work that way.
  - refurb 6y ago
    Sure it does. If you want to prepared for an epidemic, you have to accept that you’re going to waste money. And at any rate, I know the gov’t has deals with pharma companies. They’ll often swap expired product so the stockpile stays current.

gsibble 6y ago

We're also making hundreds of millions of doses of vaccines that may not work just like HCQ. Is that dumb? I certainly don't think so. It's a fast moving situation and if something MAY show promise, it makes sense to obtain a ton of it. Stop trying to make an issue out of nothing.

cgb223 6y ago

It’s better to have a stockpile of things that might work than to not have a stockpile of something if it’s revealed to work and suddenly there’s a scramble for that resource. Think PPE, potential treatments, Ventilators

digsy 6y ago
PPE, potential treatments, Ventilators have all been proven to work for their intended purposes. Thats why we stockpile them. Stockpiling something in the hopes that it might help is a waste of resources.
- ikerdanzel 6y ago
  Widely known and used in Eastern Asia side. You need to have friends in medical fields from that region to know. The western side is basically disinformation itself because of democratic-republican tussle during current year election agenda. Western countries mortality are significant higher in those countries choosing to not use it. I suggest you contact any of your friends working in medical fields working in Eastern Asian side to know a clearer picture.
- akvadrako 6y ago
  It isn’t true that ventilators are proven to be useful against Covid; at least the evidence is consistent that hcq being more effective. Also ventilators are very expensive and hcq is very cheap.

Mizza 6y ago

I find it disgusting how politicized this particular drug became. I think people really decided that it was either useless or miraculous simply because of Trump's excitment about it. There was a period of time in March when this was an early leading candidate for treatment and the government acted proactively. I don't think this was a bad decision, even if it was incorrect in hindsight.

non-entity 6y ago
> I find it disgusting how politicized this particular drug became. I cant fucking stand this type of shit anymore. No critical thinking, just attach some initial opinion about something based on how its been politicized and never think about it again. It's either Trump is God is said ots good so it's good, or Trump is the devil and said it's bad so its bad. Then just dismiss any sort potential evidence to contrary as propaganda / conspiracy / etc. Wish there was was away to get away from it.
- sundbry 6y ago
  This is the democrazy we chose. It's not going to last very much longer. It is nearly impossible to make rational, level-headed decisions. Federalist 10 was prophetic.
ciarannolan 6y ago
It highlights the importance of good leadership, which in this case does not happen to include going on TV and blabbering about drugs you know nothing about. If the president was able to keep his mouth shut these HQ studies could have continued uninterrupted and the conversation around HQ wouldn't be such a political mess.
- cm2187 6y ago
  In other words it is not the fault of the people who are trying to kill a molecule just because they don’t like Trump?
  - 6y ago

nnx 6y ago

Useless for what? That HCQ is useless for severe cases where patient require artificial ventilation is nothing new, it has been highlighted by scientific HCQ proponents from the beginning (eg. see Pr Raoult studies, Spain prophylaxis trial for medical staff, ...). Severe cases are not overwhelmed by the virus but by their own immune system response... in fact there is a lower viral load during the lethal phase of the disease. Where HCQ might be useful is for prophylaxis or in early phase of the disease to quickly reduce viral load (therefore infectivity). In this setting, plenty studies are still ongoing and positive results are visible in multiple afaik.

SomeoneFromCA 6y ago
Central Asia (Uzbekistan in particular) uses (not-hydroxy-but-good-old-plain) chloroquine to treat Covid. Death rate is low, lowest in the world actually. You cannot trust the numbers though.
tim333 6y ago
It's interesting in Raoult's results that they treated 3320 patients with 18 deaths or about 0.5% and you can say ok thats quite low but maybe they were young and healthy. However if you look at the age of the deaths there zero deaths under age 60 and one under 70. It seems unlikely for that to happen if the treatment did nothing. Apparently without treatment deaths under 60 are something like 20% of the total usually. (him talking about it in French https://youtu.be/Sc1-JBX2y70?t=268 https://youtu.be/Sc1-JBX2y70?t=268) I can't help but feel when historians look back on this that they will figure there were unnecessary deaths due to political biases.

pcvarmint 6y ago

Hydroxychloroquine can prevent cytokine cascade, which fills the lungs and can cause pneumonia. It should be doctor and patient's choice whether to use it. The Lancet was forced to retract an article critical of hydroxychloroquine, dubbed "LancetGate". [1] [2] [3] [1] https://audioboom.com/posts/7605833-lancetgate-illustrates-science-distorted-by-anti-trump-partisanship-what-is-to-be-done-richar https://audioboom.com/posts/7605833-lancetgate-illustrates-s... [2] https://www.hoover.org/research/lancets-covid-fiasco https://www.hoover.org/research/lancets-covid-fiasco [3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8hhhG61Lx2E https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8hhhG61Lx2E

tgafpc2 6y ago

Not useless at all. Still given off label under the supervision of a doctor. Still studies going on. The big 'study' was retracted. Could still be part of several treatment plans.