6 ms·

As far as I understood, the distaste for the support of the drug in the context of Covid-19 was that it hasn’t been proven to be the “miracle cure” some people

As far as I understood, the distaste for the support of the drug in the context of Covid-19 was that it hasn’t been proven to be the “miracle cure” some people have touted it to be. Said touting was causing shortages at pharmacies where people like you who require the drug were not able to get access to it suddenly because of hordes of “supporters” buying up entire stocks. Not because of who pushes it. It’s the consequences of uninformed broadcasting like calling it a final cure that have people shook.

treeman79 6y ago
That’s not what is going on. News broadcasters are denouncing it as dangerous, and we can’t talk about it. Social media is banning videos by actual doctors. A drug with a 10-50% success rate will still save a lot of lives. This drug already saves millions of lives. My life is much better on it then before. It’s already reached miracle cure status. Question is, will it do it again. Cases and deaths averted. It is estimated that a cumulative 1.2 billion fewer malaria cases and 6.2 million fewer malaria deaths occurred globally between 2001 and 2015 https://apps.who.int/iris/bitstream/handle/10665/200018/9789241565158_eng.pdf?sequence=1 https://apps.who.int/iris/bitstream/handle/10665/200018/9789...
- notacoward 6y ago
  > News broadcasters are denouncing it as dangerous It is dangerous. Proper dosage and monitoring are necessary to guard against risk of QT prolongation and retinopathy. It's possible for it to be true both that it saves millions of lives and that it's dangerous to take unsupervised. > A drug with a 10-50% success rate will still save a lot of lives. There is zero evidence that it has anywhere near that level of effectiveness, even when combined with zinc and azithromycin for the most favorable population and conditions. It might have some effect, but touting it as a miracle cure when other treatments are already known with greater effect and lower risk is irresponsible.
  - DudeInBasement 6y ago
    Genius level here.... Drugs are dangerous. www.henryford.com/news/2020/07/hydro-treatment-study
    - wlesieutre 6y ago
      See also: https://www.statnews.com/2020/07/08/a-flawed-covid-19-study-gets-the-white-houses-attention-and-the-fda-may-pay-the-price/ https://www.statnews.com/2020/07/08/a-flawed-covid-19-study-... >The study that sparked the latest controversy was anything but randomized. Not only was it not randomized, outside experts noted, but patients who received hydroxychloroquine were also more likely to get steroids, which appear to help very sick patients with Covid-19. That is likely to have influenced the central finding of the Henry Ford study: that death rates were 50% lower among patients in hospitals treated with hydroxychloroquine. >One study, the RECOVERY study conducted in the U.K., compared 1,542 patients on a particularly high dose of the drug to 3,132 control patients and found no difference in how long patients lived. A second, conducted by the National Institutes of Health, also found no benefit from hydroxychloroquine at higher doses.
    - salasrod 6y ago
      It is dangerous, and the organization you linked to has been under heavy scrutiny for their so called "study". https://www.deadlinedetroit.com/articles/25726/controversial_detroit_study_helps_fuel_white_house_s_renewed_push_for_hydroxychloroquine https://www.deadlinedetroit.com/articles/25726/controversial...
  - spaginal 6y ago
    Every drug is dangerous at improper dosage. It’s a fickle argument. It’s like trying to argue that people shouldn’t drink water, because if they had too much of it they’d drown or choke. We prescribe drugs everyday with a proper dosage on the bottle, and people handle it just fine. This is no different. Either way, HCQ is widely available and inexpensive, zinc is widely available and inexpensive, and I believe that is the crux of the real issue. Even if it worked for a small percentage of people, it’s still a significant tool in the fight. The problem is, there is a coordinated push towards expensive patented drugs and vaccines on the population, we are watching marketing, propaganda, and censorship at this point. Can’t have a $10 solution to a $10,000,000,000,000 problem.
- anonymoushn 6y ago
  Here's the full paragraph: Cases and deaths averted. It is estimated that a cumulative 1.2 billion fewer malaria cases and 6.2 million fewer malaria deaths occurred globally between 2001 and 2015 than would have been the case had incidence and mortality rates remained unchanged since 2000. In sub-Saharan Africa, it is estimated that malaria control interventions accounted for 70% of the 943 million fewer malaria cases occurring between 2001 and 2015, averting 663 million malaria cases (range: 542–753 million). Of the 663 million cases averted due to malaria control interventions, it is estimated that 69% were averted due to use of insecticide-treated mosquito nets (ITNs) (UI: 63–73%), 21% due to artemisininbased combination therapy (ACT) (UI: 17–29%) and 10% due to indoor residual spraying (IRS) (UI: 6–14%). My impression is that HCQ is not involved in any of the mentioned interventions, but is considered an alternative to ACT for some specific species.
- sheepybloke 6y ago
  But it is what's going on? I understand that it's helped in a lot of areas, but it seems like the general consensus is that corona is not one of those. https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2020/07/donald-trump-jr-and-breitbart-get-twitter-timeouts-over-covid-video/ https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2020/07/donald-trump-jr-...
  - ColanR 6y ago
    Medicine is not a popularity contest. There's good evidence that it is actually beneficial; insofar as popularity is important, note that Ars is only describing an official position, not a consensus. Note also that most indications of its benefit are in conjunction with azithromycin and possibly zinc (that's not a no true scotsman, it's the consistent data), which the Ars source disregards.
- behringer 6y ago
  "Real doctors". Are you talking about that breitbart propaganda piece? Even the camera shake was fake.
- dragonwriter 6y ago
  > That’s not what is going on. News broadcasters are denouncing it as dangerous, It is dangerous, it has significant side effects. It is worth it for things where it has therapeutic utility, but clinical trials for it in COVID-19 keep coming back showing no benefit. > A drug with a 10-50% success rate will still save a lot of lives. It would. But one with no measurable benefit won't. > This drug already saves millions of lives. Perhaps; it is certainly useful for treating certain conditions that aren't COVID-19, and it should continue to go to people who need it for things it is effective in treating. No one is saying it's a bad drug, just that the evidence is that it's not a useful drug for treating COVID-19.
  - ColanR 6y ago
    > no measurable benefit won't Then I guess you're not talking about hydroxychloroquine, because there is evidence of a reduction in mortality rate. https://www.ijidonline.com/article/S1201-9712(20)30534-8/fulltext https://www.ijidonline.com/article/S1201-9712(20)30534-8/ful...
    - dragonwriter 6y ago
      That's not a clinical trial. The actual clinical trials keep finding no benefit.
      - ColanR 6y ago
        That's because the clinical trials aren't studying hydroxychloroquine in conjunction with azithromycin, which is where the effect is noticable. They have to actually study the thing that was indicated to work, if they're going to show it doesn't work.
        fabian2k 6y ago
        This is one trial looking at both, and it didn't find any effect: https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2019014?query=featured_home https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2019014?query=fe... I'm pretty sure there are more.
- cowboysauce 6y ago
  How is HCQ's effects on malaria even remotely relevant? Malaria is caused by a eukaryote parasite and SARS-CoV-2 is an RNA virus. They're radically different and unless you have some sources demonstrating some sort of biochemical pathway that is common to the two that HCQ affects, I don't see why you would even mention it. I mean aspirin relives headaches, is part of the gold standard treatment for Kawasaki disease and prevents heart attacks and probably has fewer studies showing that it's not effective in the treatment of COVID-19, but that's no reason to speculate as to whether it'll prove to be another miracle cure.
  - ColanR 6y ago
    > I don't see why you would even mention it Because empirical results trump theory. I think you vastly overestimate how much we actually understand about the human body.
- 52-6F-62 6y ago
  > That’s not what is going on. News broadcasters are denouncing it as dangerous, and we can’t talk about it. Social media is banning videos by actual doctors. Certainly context is important here. Taking regular antibiotics is also touted as dangerous and widely criticized because of the potential fallout effects of doing so, and yet I just finished a prescription of Moxifloxacin to resolve pneumonia and pleural effusion. It doesn't mean that the criticism is wrong. And, forgive me if I'm mistaken, but isn't the video that was removed by a doctor who is known for citing some vaccines as coming from alien DNA and criticizing mask-wearing as a useless endeavour? If so, then I'm not terribly surprised. And regardless, I don't believe that falls under the definition of free speech anyhow—Twitter is a private company (this is the platform coming under fire for that, yeah?).
dragonwriter 6y ago
> As far as I understood, the distaste for the support of the drug in the context of Covid-19 was that it hasn’t been proven to be the “miracle cure” some people have touted it to be. No, it's that in the various clinical trials, it keeps showing no improvement over existing treatments. It's not just not a miracle cure, the evidence is that it's not a useful treatment for COVID-19.
- 52-6F-62 6y ago
  Thanks. I was trying to be as diplomatic as possible because I didn't have all of the information on hand to get into a medical debate. It's outside my lane.
mariodiana 6y ago
Serious question: Who ever said it was a "miracle cure"? Going by memory, the most notorious kind words on the subject of hydroxychloroquine were: "It may be a game-changer. Or, maybe not." For some reason—I can't say what, exactly—that got spun by the media into something else entirely.

treeman79 6y ago

That’s not what is going on. News broadcasters are denouncing it as dangerous, and we can’t talk about it. Social media is banning videos by actual doctors. A drug with a 10-50% success rate will still save a lot of lives. This drug already saves millions of lives. My life is much better on it then before. It’s already reached miracle cure status. Question is, will it do it again. Cases and deaths averted. It is estimated that a cumulative 1.2 billion fewer malaria cases and 6.2 million fewer malaria deaths occurred globally between 2001 and 2015 https://apps.who.int/iris/bitstream/handle/10665/200018/9789241565158_eng.pdf?sequence=1 https://apps.who.int/iris/bitstream/handle/10665/200018/9789...

notacoward 6y ago
> News broadcasters are denouncing it as dangerous It is dangerous. Proper dosage and monitoring are necessary to guard against risk of QT prolongation and retinopathy. It's possible for it to be true both that it saves millions of lives and that it's dangerous to take unsupervised. > A drug with a 10-50% success rate will still save a lot of lives. There is zero evidence that it has anywhere near that level of effectiveness, even when combined with zinc and azithromycin for the most favorable population and conditions. It might have some effect, but touting it as a miracle cure when other treatments are already known with greater effect and lower risk is irresponsible.
- DudeInBasement 6y ago
  Genius level here.... Drugs are dangerous. www.henryford.com/news/2020/07/hydro-treatment-study
  - wlesieutre 6y ago
    See also: https://www.statnews.com/2020/07/08/a-flawed-covid-19-study-gets-the-white-houses-attention-and-the-fda-may-pay-the-price/ https://www.statnews.com/2020/07/08/a-flawed-covid-19-study-... >The study that sparked the latest controversy was anything but randomized. Not only was it not randomized, outside experts noted, but patients who received hydroxychloroquine were also more likely to get steroids, which appear to help very sick patients with Covid-19. That is likely to have influenced the central finding of the Henry Ford study: that death rates were 50% lower among patients in hospitals treated with hydroxychloroquine. >One study, the RECOVERY study conducted in the U.K., compared 1,542 patients on a particularly high dose of the drug to 3,132 control patients and found no difference in how long patients lived. A second, conducted by the National Institutes of Health, also found no benefit from hydroxychloroquine at higher doses.
  - salasrod 6y ago
    It is dangerous, and the organization you linked to has been under heavy scrutiny for their so called "study". https://www.deadlinedetroit.com/articles/25726/controversial_detroit_study_helps_fuel_white_house_s_renewed_push_for_hydroxychloroquine https://www.deadlinedetroit.com/articles/25726/controversial...
- spaginal 6y ago
  Every drug is dangerous at improper dosage. It’s a fickle argument. It’s like trying to argue that people shouldn’t drink water, because if they had too much of it they’d drown or choke. We prescribe drugs everyday with a proper dosage on the bottle, and people handle it just fine. This is no different. Either way, HCQ is widely available and inexpensive, zinc is widely available and inexpensive, and I believe that is the crux of the real issue. Even if it worked for a small percentage of people, it’s still a significant tool in the fight. The problem is, there is a coordinated push towards expensive patented drugs and vaccines on the population, we are watching marketing, propaganda, and censorship at this point. Can’t have a $10 solution to a $10,000,000,000,000 problem.
anonymoushn 6y ago
Here's the full paragraph: Cases and deaths averted. It is estimated that a cumulative 1.2 billion fewer malaria cases and 6.2 million fewer malaria deaths occurred globally between 2001 and 2015 than would have been the case had incidence and mortality rates remained unchanged since 2000. In sub-Saharan Africa, it is estimated that malaria control interventions accounted for 70% of the 943 million fewer malaria cases occurring between 2001 and 2015, averting 663 million malaria cases (range: 542–753 million). Of the 663 million cases averted due to malaria control interventions, it is estimated that 69% were averted due to use of insecticide-treated mosquito nets (ITNs) (UI: 63–73%), 21% due to artemisininbased combination therapy (ACT) (UI: 17–29%) and 10% due to indoor residual spraying (IRS) (UI: 6–14%). My impression is that HCQ is not involved in any of the mentioned interventions, but is considered an alternative to ACT for some specific species.
sheepybloke 6y ago
But it is what's going on? I understand that it's helped in a lot of areas, but it seems like the general consensus is that corona is not one of those. https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2020/07/donald-trump-jr-and-breitbart-get-twitter-timeouts-over-covid-video/ https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2020/07/donald-trump-jr-...
- ColanR 6y ago
  Medicine is not a popularity contest. There's good evidence that it is actually beneficial; insofar as popularity is important, note that Ars is only describing an official position, not a consensus. Note also that most indications of its benefit are in conjunction with azithromycin and possibly zinc (that's not a no true scotsman, it's the consistent data), which the Ars source disregards.
behringer 6y ago
"Real doctors". Are you talking about that breitbart propaganda piece? Even the camera shake was fake.
dragonwriter 6y ago
> That’s not what is going on. News broadcasters are denouncing it as dangerous, It is dangerous, it has significant side effects. It is worth it for things where it has therapeutic utility, but clinical trials for it in COVID-19 keep coming back showing no benefit. > A drug with a 10-50% success rate will still save a lot of lives. It would. But one with no measurable benefit won't. > This drug already saves millions of lives. Perhaps; it is certainly useful for treating certain conditions that aren't COVID-19, and it should continue to go to people who need it for things it is effective in treating. No one is saying it's a bad drug, just that the evidence is that it's not a useful drug for treating COVID-19.
- ColanR 6y ago
  > no measurable benefit won't Then I guess you're not talking about hydroxychloroquine, because there is evidence of a reduction in mortality rate. https://www.ijidonline.com/article/S1201-9712(20)30534-8/fulltext https://www.ijidonline.com/article/S1201-9712(20)30534-8/ful...
  - dragonwriter 6y ago
    That's not a clinical trial. The actual clinical trials keep finding no benefit.
    - ColanR 6y ago
      That's because the clinical trials aren't studying hydroxychloroquine in conjunction with azithromycin, which is where the effect is noticable. They have to actually study the thing that was indicated to work, if they're going to show it doesn't work.
      - fabian2k 6y ago
        This is one trial looking at both, and it didn't find any effect: https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2019014?query=featured_home https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2019014?query=fe... I'm pretty sure there are more.
cowboysauce 6y ago
How is HCQ's effects on malaria even remotely relevant? Malaria is caused by a eukaryote parasite and SARS-CoV-2 is an RNA virus. They're radically different and unless you have some sources demonstrating some sort of biochemical pathway that is common to the two that HCQ affects, I don't see why you would even mention it. I mean aspirin relives headaches, is part of the gold standard treatment for Kawasaki disease and prevents heart attacks and probably has fewer studies showing that it's not effective in the treatment of COVID-19, but that's no reason to speculate as to whether it'll prove to be another miracle cure.
- ColanR 6y ago
  > I don't see why you would even mention it Because empirical results trump theory. I think you vastly overestimate how much we actually understand about the human body.
52-6F-62 6y ago
> That’s not what is going on. News broadcasters are denouncing it as dangerous, and we can’t talk about it. Social media is banning videos by actual doctors. Certainly context is important here. Taking regular antibiotics is also touted as dangerous and widely criticized because of the potential fallout effects of doing so, and yet I just finished a prescription of Moxifloxacin to resolve pneumonia and pleural effusion. It doesn't mean that the criticism is wrong. And, forgive me if I'm mistaken, but isn't the video that was removed by a doctor who is known for citing some vaccines as coming from alien DNA and criticizing mask-wearing as a useless endeavour? If so, then I'm not terribly surprised. And regardless, I don't believe that falls under the definition of free speech anyhow—Twitter is a private company (this is the platform coming under fire for that, yeah?).

dragonwriter 6y ago

> As far as I understood, the distaste for the support of the drug in the context of Covid-19 was that it hasn’t been proven to be the “miracle cure” some people have touted it to be. No, it's that in the various clinical trials, it keeps showing no improvement over existing treatments. It's not just not a miracle cure, the evidence is that it's not a useful treatment for COVID-19.

52-6F-62 6y ago
Thanks. I was trying to be as diplomatic as possible because I didn't have all of the information on hand to get into a medical debate. It's outside my lane.

mariodiana 6y ago

Serious question: Who ever said it was a "miracle cure"? Going by memory, the most notorious kind words on the subject of hydroxychloroquine were: "It may be a game-changer. Or, maybe not." For some reason—I can't say what, exactly—that got spun by the media into something else entirely.