3 ms·
When you're dealing with a new disease there are no best practices for treatment. This is tautologically true. That's why doctors have to use their best judgeme
by gizmo 6y ago
When you're dealing with a new disease there are no best practices for treatment. This is tautologically true. That's why doctors have to use their best judgement and try different things and write down what seems to work and what doesn't. Often they get it wrong, with very bad consequences. For instance putting covid patients prematurely on mechanical ventilators had catastrophic health implications. When this became apparent ventilator policy changed. People died and now we know better. It's ugly, but that's how you learn about treating a new(ish) disease. Waiting for the results of multiple randomized controlled trials is, frankly, fantasy. Covid has almost entirely ran its course and we aren't close to having solid treatment results from randomized controlled trials. Premature and ad-hoc treatment is how we've muddled through the pandemic, and it's how we'll muddle through the next pandemic, too.
- manicdee 6y ago> When you're dealing with a new disease there are no best practices for treatment. That doesn't give you carte blanche to claim that your drug does wonderful things for condition X when the evidence supporting your claim is non-existent, extremely weak, or obviously fraudulent. > That's why doctors have to use their best judgement and try different things and write down what seems to work and what doesn't. Which is completely different to POTUS recommending HCQ because he or his friends have financial interest in a company that makes that drug. It's also extremely negligent to try popularising a particular drug which is already in short supply and needed by people with existing life-threatening conditions. If something looks promising, you finance some trials to provide more certainty, and then you look at ways to ramp up production because you know demand is going to increase.