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> “It is hard to find an example of quackery that has spread so far, influencing the public health response to a deadly pandemic and creating widespread confusi

> “It is hard to find an example of quackery that has spread so far, influencing the public health response to a deadly pandemic and creating widespread confusion across the entire globe.” It isn't hard: the Lancet has published a completely made-up study written by an unknown team, before they retracted the paper. If I wanted to fuel conspiracy theories, I don't think I could come up with anything better.

polotics 6y ago
To make sure HN'ers don't get things mixed up: Raoult has nothing to do with the Lancet's "study", and in an environment where such hogwash gets published, how is one clinician with the daily burden of the families of the many covid dead not going to try and do something?
gadders 6y ago
Since Trump publicised hydroxychloroquine the whole debate around it has become so poisoned by politics it's unable to find an unbiassed opinion. The Lancet study seemed to have rushed to publication purely to discredit Trump.
raverbashing 6y ago
Yeah don't remind me. People pulling numbers out of thin air to feed fuel to the fire (and apparently no reviewer with TL suspected that "AI driven data collection").
ekianjo 6y ago
> “It is hard to find an example of quackery that has spread so far, influencing the public health response to a deadly pandemic and creating widespread confusion across the entire globe.” Or the WHO themselves claiming that masks do not work for months then suddenly reversing their position in the middle of the pandemic. But "Trust Science" they said.
- hyper_reality 6y ago
  I'm fed up of people repeating this over-simplified putdown of WHO on HN. The advice about masks was on their website on March 2020 largely because they were worried about mass public buying of masks, leaving a shortage for frontline medical workers (https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-who/masks-should-be-prioritized-for-health-workers-any-lifting-of-lockdowns-gradual-who-idUSKBN21O2GV https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-who/ma...). The guidance was updated as more evidence came in and production of masks scaled up. This should not be compared to outright quackery.
  - ekianjo 6y ago
    > The advice about masks was on their website on March 2020 largely because they were worried about mass public buying of masks, That did not change the fact that they lied and misled the public and killed people.
    - GuB-42 6y ago
      They didn't lie. They always stop short of saying that masks don't work. They said that it is not a substitute for distancing (true), that health workers should be prioritized (true), that masks don't provide the expected level of protection when not properly fit (true), etc... It is a bit misleading, sure, but no lies, they let secondary sources lie for them. So about misleading the public, I think we can say it is the case. Now about "killing people". Did they kill or did they save people? Remember that people fought about toilet paper, even though there was no real shortage and it is just a comfort item (protip: you can wash your ass in the shower). With masks, there was a real shortage, and it is an essential item for health care workers. We couldn't let nobodies stockpile hundreds of masks while people who are supposed to treat you get sick. That would really have killed people. And despite downplaying the importance of masks, is was still a mess. I know a pharmacist who got tasked with supplying masks to health care workers who had masks "disappear" in transit, and health care didn't get their masks. Herself should have got N95 masks, but she didn't, instead only having surgical masks, and she had to keep them longer than recommended. She also had to deal with hysterical customers who "needed a mask" for no good reason. And it was as the importance of masks was downplayed. I don't want to imagine what would have happened if it wasn't.
- jariel 6y ago
  "Or the WHO themselves claiming that masks do not work for months then suddenly reversing their position in the middle of the pandemic. But "Trust Science" they said" Public Communications and Science are different things. If masks are very scarce, and we need to ration, then we want to prioritize certain groups. Once they are plentiful, the marginal benefit of masks becomes beneficial to the extent it doesn't interfere with front-line usage, in which case, we definitely want people o wear masks. And so we use different words, mediums, forms of messaging to get people to change their behaviour, some of it more effective than others. The medical community has to triage all the time, literally at your hospital right now, they are using their knowledge to ration the resources they have available at any given moment. If you complain of 'chest pain' then you go to the front of the line. The Razor Award should be a thing now, because news about some kinds of science spreads quickly.
  - ekianjo 6y ago
    > If masks are very scarce, and we need to ration, then we want to prioritize certain groups. Then why didn't they say so instead of lying to the public? "masks work, but we need to allocate them to health workers because we don't have enough of them". Anyone can understand that.
    - jariel 6y ago
      "Then why didn't they say so instead of lying to the public?" ? They quite clearly told us that they were prioritizing medical workers. Read the WHO's guidelines yourself. Here's the WHO guidance as of April [1] June [2], which is pretty early. You can see the guidance evolve during that time and it was still early. Here is the CBC's public notice on March 25, a couple weeks before the epidemic hit hard in Canada [3] "The advice on whether or not to wear masks to reduce the spread of COVID-19 has shifted since the start of the pandemic. Public health officials now say that wearing masks can prevent some potentially infectious respiratory droplets from spreading to others, but most still recommend that N95 masks, above, be reserved for health care settings." Frankly, the only thing I remember about masks early on was 'get them to the front line workers' to the point where in my family we were going to donate our own N95s to the hospital, but they were already used. [1] https://apps.who.int/iris/bitstream/handle/10665/331693/WHO-2019-nCov-IPC_Masks-2020.3-eng.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y https://apps.who.int/iris/bitstream/handle/10665/331693/WHO-... [2] https://www.who.int/dg/speeches/detail/who-director-general-s-opening-remarks-at-the-media-briefing-on-covid-19---5-june-2020 https://www.who.int/dg/speeches/detail/who-director-general-... [3] https://www.cbc.ca/news/health/masks-coronavirus-1.5507186 https://www.cbc.ca/news/health/masks-coronavirus-1.5507186

polotics 6y ago

To make sure HN'ers don't get things mixed up: Raoult has nothing to do with the Lancet's "study", and in an environment where such hogwash gets published, how is one clinician with the daily burden of the families of the many covid dead not going to try and do something?

gadders 6y ago

Since Trump publicised hydroxychloroquine the whole debate around it has become so poisoned by politics it's unable to find an unbiassed opinion. The Lancet study seemed to have rushed to publication purely to discredit Trump.

raverbashing 6y ago

Yeah don't remind me. People pulling numbers out of thin air to feed fuel to the fire (and apparently no reviewer with TL suspected that "AI driven data collection").

ekianjo 6y ago

> “It is hard to find an example of quackery that has spread so far, influencing the public health response to a deadly pandemic and creating widespread confusion across the entire globe.” Or the WHO themselves claiming that masks do not work for months then suddenly reversing their position in the middle of the pandemic. But "Trust Science" they said.

hyper_reality 6y ago
I'm fed up of people repeating this over-simplified putdown of WHO on HN. The advice about masks was on their website on March 2020 largely because they were worried about mass public buying of masks, leaving a shortage for frontline medical workers (https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-who/masks-should-be-prioritized-for-health-workers-any-lifting-of-lockdowns-gradual-who-idUSKBN21O2GV https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-who/ma...). The guidance was updated as more evidence came in and production of masks scaled up. This should not be compared to outright quackery.
- ekianjo 6y ago
  > The advice about masks was on their website on March 2020 largely because they were worried about mass public buying of masks, That did not change the fact that they lied and misled the public and killed people.
  - GuB-42 6y ago
    They didn't lie. They always stop short of saying that masks don't work. They said that it is not a substitute for distancing (true), that health workers should be prioritized (true), that masks don't provide the expected level of protection when not properly fit (true), etc... It is a bit misleading, sure, but no lies, they let secondary sources lie for them. So about misleading the public, I think we can say it is the case. Now about "killing people". Did they kill or did they save people? Remember that people fought about toilet paper, even though there was no real shortage and it is just a comfort item (protip: you can wash your ass in the shower). With masks, there was a real shortage, and it is an essential item for health care workers. We couldn't let nobodies stockpile hundreds of masks while people who are supposed to treat you get sick. That would really have killed people. And despite downplaying the importance of masks, is was still a mess. I know a pharmacist who got tasked with supplying masks to health care workers who had masks "disappear" in transit, and health care didn't get their masks. Herself should have got N95 masks, but she didn't, instead only having surgical masks, and she had to keep them longer than recommended. She also had to deal with hysterical customers who "needed a mask" for no good reason. And it was as the importance of masks was downplayed. I don't want to imagine what would have happened if it wasn't.
jariel 6y ago
"Or the WHO themselves claiming that masks do not work for months then suddenly reversing their position in the middle of the pandemic. But "Trust Science" they said" Public Communications and Science are different things. If masks are very scarce, and we need to ration, then we want to prioritize certain groups. Once they are plentiful, the marginal benefit of masks becomes beneficial to the extent it doesn't interfere with front-line usage, in which case, we definitely want people o wear masks. And so we use different words, mediums, forms of messaging to get people to change their behaviour, some of it more effective than others. The medical community has to triage all the time, literally at your hospital right now, they are using their knowledge to ration the resources they have available at any given moment. If you complain of 'chest pain' then you go to the front of the line. The Razor Award should be a thing now, because news about some kinds of science spreads quickly.
- ekianjo 6y ago
  > If masks are very scarce, and we need to ration, then we want to prioritize certain groups. Then why didn't they say so instead of lying to the public? "masks work, but we need to allocate them to health workers because we don't have enough of them". Anyone can understand that.
  - jariel 6y ago
    "Then why didn't they say so instead of lying to the public?" ? They quite clearly told us that they were prioritizing medical workers. Read the WHO's guidelines yourself. Here's the WHO guidance as of April [1] June [2], which is pretty early. You can see the guidance evolve during that time and it was still early. Here is the CBC's public notice on March 25, a couple weeks before the epidemic hit hard in Canada [3] "The advice on whether or not to wear masks to reduce the spread of COVID-19 has shifted since the start of the pandemic. Public health officials now say that wearing masks can prevent some potentially infectious respiratory droplets from spreading to others, but most still recommend that N95 masks, above, be reserved for health care settings." Frankly, the only thing I remember about masks early on was 'get them to the front line workers' to the point where in my family we were going to donate our own N95s to the hospital, but they were already used. [1] https://apps.who.int/iris/bitstream/handle/10665/331693/WHO-2019-nCov-IPC_Masks-2020.3-eng.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y https://apps.who.int/iris/bitstream/handle/10665/331693/WHO-... [2] https://www.who.int/dg/speeches/detail/who-director-general-s-opening-remarks-at-the-media-briefing-on-covid-19---5-june-2020 https://www.who.int/dg/speeches/detail/who-director-general-... [3] https://www.cbc.ca/news/health/masks-coronavirus-1.5507186 https://www.cbc.ca/news/health/masks-coronavirus-1.5507186