Geoff Guenther + 317 April 29, 2020 4 minutes ago, Jan van Eck said: Well then, would you not conclude that it would be prudent for the USA to distance itself from China, stop issuing visas to Chinese nationals, and shut down direct flights, requiring visitors to travel by sea (and thus be effectively quarantined for two weeks)? Why keep doing business with a society that slaughters pangolins in those Wet markets and spreads diseases around, all in the idea that eating that stuff and powdered rhino horns gives you sexual stamina and prowess? I mean - who needs this? Let's decamp, leave those people alone, and if that is how they want to run their society, fine, we keep our distance. Time to forget about China, they have done enough damage (and show no inclination to change their ways, from what I can make of it). I've thought about it, and believe that a few years ago the west could have brought China to its knees quite easily. I don't think its so straightforward anymore. First off, China is not the only country with bad hygene problems. Think of how mad cow disease here in the UK was caused by feeding sheep brains to cattle. Think of how some chicken farms in the US use anti-biotics to grow chickens quickly and in the hope they aren't diseased, then feed them live into a plucker to save money. The bat-borne viruses, MERS, came out of the Middle East and would be far scarier than COVID-19 if it was contagious. Second, if you take Canada as an example, Canada had a few cases come in from China, but the more problematic ones came in from Iran and the US because the Canadians weren't expecting cases from there. Isolating from one country doesn't protect you from cases coming from elsewhere unless you become cold-war Albania. The biggest reason, though, is that China (or more correctly, the CCP) is quickly gaining the capability of projecting power. The more the US decamps, we'll watch as China fills the voids. Just like China turned inward in the 15th century, allowing Europe to conquer the world, a US that turns completely inward will allow others to gain power. And up until recently, the US and the rest of the world have both been much richer becaus of American leadership. Just my thoughts on this. 1 1 Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
footeab@yahoo.com + 2,190 April 29, 2020 (edited) 4 hours ago, UNC12345 said: I'm not even sure what to believe anymore to be completely honest, but this is a classic and well-worn strategy on here....discredit the source if you disagree with the stated view. Very few will believe any source that doesn't agree with their own views. Well lazy D******, did you READ the links? No, of course not, you are a lefty and logic science does not apply to the left... Forbes made insinuations, the OTHER, DOCUMENTED when/where the breakouts occurred. Edited April 29, 2020 by footeab@yahoo.com 1 Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
ronwagn + 6,290 April 29, 2020 8 hours ago, Geoff Guenther said: As I showed earlie in the thread, if you extrapolate NY State numbers across the US, you get very much the same numbers that epidemiologists projected. My extrapolation based on the best available NY data showed around 1.5 million vs the initial 2.2 million estimated months ago. I'll put in the caveat that my data likely undercounted the deaths by about 25%. No one has countered the math that I did despite their horror at my being right. So it's a safe assumption that my numbers are valid. I haven't noticed you being right about any projections at all. I have been spot on by calling all of the projections bogus alarmism. I was a little off though. I estimated a .05 mortality rate. Now it is starting to look more like .03. All I have seen from you is alarmism. Maybe you can show me your correct projections. 3 Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
notsonice + 1,255 DM April 29, 2020 2000- 2500 dead a day in the US with social distancing, and the miracle malaria drugs are not working. Without social distancing you can bet we will be at a minimum of 5000 dead a day. Stay in your bunkers folks a vaccine is 1 year away 1 1 Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Geoff Guenther + 317 April 29, 2020 (edited) 31 minutes ago, ronwagn said: I haven't noticed you being right about any projections at all. I have been spot on by calling all of the projections bogus alarmism. I was a little off though. I estimated a .05 mortality rate. Now it is starting to look more like .03. All I have seen from you is alarmism. Maybe you can show me your correct projections. My projections haven't changed much from the beginning. But I'll continue to try to teach a little math. New York State has 19.45 million people. New York has had 23,474 coronavirus deaths as of today. Dividing one by the other gives New York a 0.12% mortality rate. That is four times the rate of your 0.03% number and it hasn't ended yet. If you take the 61,112 deaths nationally and divide by the 330 million people in the US, you already get 0.019%, and we're only half way through the first wave. So I have no idea who gave you the 0.03% number, but whoever did should never be listened to again. Edited April 29, 2020 by Geoff Guenther 1 Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
ronwagn + 6,290 April 29, 2020 2 minutes ago, Geoff Guenther said: My projections haven't changed much from the beginning. But I'll continue to try to teach a little math. New York State has 19.45 million people. New York has had 23,474 coronavirus deaths as of today. Dividing one by the other gives New York a 0.12% mortality rate. That is four times the rate of your 0.03% number and it hasn't ended yet. If you take the 61,112 deaths nationally and divide by the 330 million people in the US, you already get 0.019%, and we're only half way through the first wave. So I have no idea where you are getting you 0.03% number, but it is completely laughable. Your analysis is completely laughable. Trying to equate the New York City megalopolis with the rest of America is just plain silly! I got my number from this source. It seems to be the most accurate right now. https://newtube.app/user/anthony/GlkxUvo 1 Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Geoff Guenther + 317 April 29, 2020 8 minutes ago, ronwagn said: Your analysis is completely laughable. Trying to equate the New York City megalopolis with the rest of America is just plain silly! I got my number from this source. It seems to be the most accurate right now. https://newtube.app/user/anthony/GlkxUvo Ron, did you even bother to read? The US is already at about 0.02% and only half way through the first wave. It is likely that the US will fly past your 0.03% number and there will still be another wave or two to come. Think for yourself. These guys are giving "statistics" that are obviously false. So why do you insist on believing them? 1 Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Coffeeguyzz + 454 GM April 29, 2020 ... So, the Italian Society for Rheumatology just released its study of 65,000 Italians who were long term users of Hydroxychloroquine (no zinc supplements) for RA and Lupus treatment. Turns out only 20 had contracted the coronavirus with NO ICU needed, nor any deaths. This infected rate is less than 1/10th the overall rate in Italy. 2 3 1 Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
UNC12345 + 171 AB April 29, 2020 1 hour ago, footeab@yahoo.com said: Well lazy D******, did you READ the links? No, of course not, you are a lefty and logic science does not apply to the left... Forbes made insinuations, the OTHER, DOCUMENTED when/where the breakouts occurred. Whoa, there's some more strategy. First, be extremely aggressive. Name-call if you must. Check. Second, again discredit the source. Check. Third. Be sure to give those who don't agree with you a nickname. Check. Well done F***head! Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
ronwagn + 6,290 April 29, 2020 (edited) 56 minutes ago, Geoff Guenther said: Ron, did you even bother to read? The US is already at about 0.02% and only half way through the first wave. It is likely that the US will fly past your 0.03% number and there will still be another wave or two to come. Think for yourself. These guys are giving "statistics" that are obviously false. So why do you insist on believing them? Statistics depend on how they are analyzed. My guess is 0.05. That is my estimated mortality for anyone who becomes infected or exposed. I stated that about six weeks ago when millions were projected to die by "experts". Give me your percentage for mortalities in the USA Geoff. Someday we can argue about who was closest. Edited April 29, 2020 by ronwagn addition 1 Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
ronwagn + 6,290 April 29, 2020 On 4/26/2020 at 10:59 PM, Henry Barth said: https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2020/04/16/tracking-covid-19-excess-deaths-across-countries Actually we could be undercounting any disease, especially the flu. RCW Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Coffeeguyzz + 454 GM April 29, 2020 This thread was started by referencing a hilariously skewed Veterans Administration cohort of very sick, elderly men (extremely high percentage being diabetic ... with 30% of the 'control group' receiving Azithromycin ... tantamount to 'scientific fraud' in Dr. Raoult's description. The just-posted comment from the Q Group (more on that in a bit) linked to the 22 PUBLISHED studies/papers - spanning January thru April this year - showing the clear efficacy of CQ/HCQ. Ongoing efforts to downplay, demonize, marginalize this approach will display - to a rapidly enlarging - awakening public just how nefarious, how viciously evil so many agents of this purposeful mayhem truly are. This includes several identifiable posters on this site. The larger group of sincere, Still-Believers will have to choose whether or not to continue to embrace this now-seen-to-be destructive nonsense ... or step back, pause, and - as in that memorable final scene of "Bridge Over the River Kwai" - reconsider that your collectively sincere, altruistic outlook has been horrifically abused to serve the most wicked of contemporary movements .. as the Alec Guinness charcter belatedly realized. As per Q, the second paragraph on Page #13 of today's linked 2009 US report on Insurgency/Counterinsurgency reveals what is going on. That 12 year old report - accurate and comprehensive as it may be - was tragically blind to the incredibly effective efforts made by entrenched subversives within the USA. General Flynn knew circa 2012. And here we are. 1 1 2 Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
ronwagn + 6,290 April 29, 2020 4 hours ago, Jan van Eck said: Tom,. you might want to step back a bit and reconsider. I find it entirely possible that 1.5 million in the USA may die from this China Flu. The reason I say this is by looking at Vermont; the casualty rate here is running at 5% of discovered infections. That is a high number. The argument could be made that there are lots and lots of undetected infections, where the infected are asymptomatic, and obviously if you are not tested and still infected then you will not be showing up in the stats and those stats will be biased upwards. But I am not so sanguine. The reason is that rural States (such as Vermont) have mostly rural populations where the folks do not travel much outside their areas, and typically do not travel to the "city," be that Burlington or a larger city outside the State such as Boston or New York. So you get this infection pattern of clusters in the largest city, Burlington, and pretty much nothing out in the boondocks. The deaths are also concentrated in the cities. So the reason the disease does not migrate out into the countryside is largely due to absence of travel to and fro cities in the countryside by the country folks. Ultimately, this disease becomes widespread - it just may well take time, possibly years. Let us assume that ultimately there is a 60% infection rate. That is 198 million. A death rate of 5% is a staggering 9.9 million. At a death rate of one-half percent, you are still at 990,000. "If" no vaccine is developed and injected, "then" with successive waves of this virus out into the population, including the countryside, it is plausible to start looking at one million dead. Don't anybody kid yourself: this is a nasty little disease. Very nasty. And right now, nobody knows which way it might mutate. It may well mutate to a non-lethal form, and become just another background irritant from China, much like bedbugs and the emerald ash borer, but that is not pre-ordained. Americans have no immunity to these Chinese viruses, and it is undetermined how this plays out. Sorry to be a wet blanket. Nobody knows when any new virus will come and how it will mutate. So we need to go on with life and make our own decisions on what we will do to protect ourselves. The government has only a limited role in the USA. We are not run by the CCP and Americans are already saying lets get back to as normal as we can as fast as we can. Talking about new waves of infection and new vaccines are things we will have to deal with. We can only prepare for the worst, but we have no constitutional powers allowing the government to make these decisions for us (in America). Other nationalities can decide what they will put up with. Many of us will shelter in place or wear masks and gloves, do many hand washings etc. Our livelihoods are as important as our lives unless you are rich, retired, or dependent. 1 Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Tom Kirkman + 8,860 April 29, 2020 44 minutes ago, Coffeeguyzz said: 22 PUBLISHED studies/papers - spanning January thru April this year - showing the clear efficacy of CQ/HCQ. A link to the document and the intro: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1545C_dJWMIAgqeLEsfo2U8Kq5WprDuARXrJl6N1aDjY/edit Sequential CQ / HCQ Research Papers and Reports January to April 20, 2020 Executive Summary Interpretation of the Data In This Report The HCQ-AZ combination, when started immediately after diagnosis, appears to be a safe and efficient treatment for COVID-19, with a mortality rate of 0.5%, in elderly patients. It avoids worsening and clears virus persistence and contagious infectivity in most cases. ... 1 4 Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Tom Kirkman + 8,860 April 30, 2020 20 minutes ago, Coffeeguyzz said: the second paragraph on Page #13 of today's linked 2009 US report on Insurgency/Counterinsurgency reveals what is going on. https://2009-2017.state.gov/documents/organization/119629.pdf 1 3 Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
footeab@yahoo.com + 2,190 April 30, 2020 1 hour ago, UNC12345 said: Whoa, there's some more strategy. First, be extremely aggressive. Name-call if you must. Check. Second, again discredit the source. Check. Third. Be sure to give those who don't agree with you a nickname. Check. Well done F***head! Typical: Get called on the carpet, as your lazyness proved you wrong, and then change the subject to being called a lazy douche because you were one... Bravo! You get a Star sticker award!⭐ 1 Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Ernst Reim + 33 ER April 30, 2020 (edited) 3 hours ago, Coffeeguyzz said: The just-posted comment from the Q Group (more on that in a bit) linked to the 22 PUBLISHED studies/papers - spanning January thru April this year - showing the clear efficacy of CQ/HCQ. I just read the link Tom provided for that report. Your statement has two main errors: "published studies/papers" and "clear efficacy". First, many if not most of the cited studies have neither been published nor peer-reviewed. Second, they do not show any "clear efficacy" as one would define it in the medical field. It is actually a pretty badly written piece: - Several of those 22 are not studies at all. For example, a video conference of a Korean taskforce agreeing on "treatment principles for patients with COVID-19", which included CQ/HCQ. That is not evidence that it worked. They were simply agreeing to hit patients with antivirals if there is no other option: "If patients are old or have underlying conditions with serious symptoms, physicians should consider an antiviral treatment as soon as possible. lopinavir 400mg/ritonavir 100mg (Kaletra two tablets, twice a day) or chloroquine 500mg orally per day. Alternate is hydroxychloroquine 400mg orally per day." - A lot of studies evidence in-vitro activity. This is promising of course, but far from "clear efficacy" in live patients. - It starts with a 2005 report of in-vitro efficiency of CQ vs. SARS. What is this even doing here? Or at least how does this lead to the "efficient treatment" conclusion ? And last but not least : Five or six of the whole bunch are Raoult papers. That guy is not without reason attacked in the medical community for its shoddy methodology. I commented somewhere else on the feeble evidence in the Raoult studies. It is a non-blinded, non-randomized study which nevertheless saw a 0.5% fatality rate and another 1.5% still hospitalized with unknown outcome. This is just plain not enough of a difference to standard-of-care for a non-blinded, non-randomized study. The conclusion of the report then ignores all but two of the papers, but at least starts with the self-limiting statement "Dependent upon a successful peer review of the data presented in 1,061 COVID-19 patients, [...] by D. Raoult [...] and a successful review of the 10 April 2020 paper by Zhaowei Chen et.al,..." It might still turn out that HCQ works or works in combination with other drugs. (Personally, I strongly doubt that any of the current antivirals will be a wondercure, but that's simply my opinion.) But there is currently not any "clear evidence" for HCQ efficacy that would justify to favor this drug over any others. If you do believe in it, go ahead, you guess is as good as mine. But please do not use this "report" as an argument for your case. It makes your position **way** too easy to attack. Edited April 30, 2020 by Ernst Reim 1 Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
surrept33 + 609 st April 30, 2020 (edited) 2 hours ago, Ernst Reim said: It might still turn out that HCQ works or works in combination with other drugs. (Personally, I strongly doubt that any of the current antivirals will be a wondercure, but that's simply my opinion.) But there is currently not any "clear evidence" for HCQ efficacy that would justify to favor this drug over any others. If you do believe in it, go ahead, you guess is as good as mine. But please do not use this "report" as an argument for your case. It makes your position **way** too easy to attack. The good thing is that most of the proposed drugs have effects @ different sites, so even if each only has partial efficacy, maybe the net result will be something efficacious. It feels convalescent plasma is the gold standard at the moment, but it's shifting from week to week. A few weeks ago, it was HCQ. Maybe it will be Remdesivir soon. Different pathways for different interventions: Edited April 30, 2020 by surrept33 2 Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Dan Warnick + 6,100 April 30, 2020 5 hours ago, Coffeeguyzz said: ... So, the Italian Society for Rheumatology just released its study of 65,000 Italians who were long term users of Hydroxychloroquine (no zinc supplements) for RA and Lupus treatment. Turns out only 20 had contracted the coronavirus with NO ICU needed, nor any deaths. This infected rate is less than 1/10th the overall rate in Italy. Link? Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Coffeeguyzz + 454 GM April 30, 2020 Mr. Reim I'll not engage in these pointless (my opinion) back and forths with individuals who stridently choose to pick and choose what they wish to be true and wish to be false. Just got off the phone with a highly regarded, stone cold honest doctor in New York. Stories are horrific with the wait time (1 month of refrigeration for corpses) for internments, 8 hour lines at food banks ... Heartbreaking. And yet, even though this doctor was familiar with Dr. Vladimir Zelenko's coronavirus/HCQ work with the Hasidic community in Rockland county, the MSM depiction was similar to yours ... disparagement, marginalization, omissions to the nth degree. Bravo. She - this doctor - had never heard of the world's (acclaimed) #1 epidemiologist, Dr. Didier Raoult, nor - obviously - of his study involving 1,061 infected patients. The success rate was ONLY 98%, as I beleive you noted. One item of our discussion piqued her interest, however, and that was that Every. Single. Doctor in her area that she knows has obtained large amounts of HCQ for themselves and their families. 4 Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
0R0 + 6,251 April 30, 2020 8 hours ago, Jan van Eck said: Tom,. you might want to step back a bit and reconsider. I find it entirely possible that 1.5 million in the USA may die from this China Flu. The reason I say this is by looking at Vermont; the casualty rate here is running at 5% of discovered infections. That is a high number. The argument could be made that there are lots and lots of undetected infections, where the infected are asymptomatic, and obviously if you are not tested and still infected then you will not be showing up in the stats and those stats will be biased upwards. But I am not so sanguine. The reason is that rural States (such as Vermont) have mostly rural populations where the folks do not travel much outside their areas, and typically do not travel to the "city," be that Burlington or a larger city outside the State such as Boston or New York. So you get this infection pattern of clusters in the largest city, Burlington, and pretty much nothing out in the boondocks. The deaths are also concentrated in the cities. So the reason the disease does not migrate out into the countryside is largely due to absence of travel to and fro cities in the countryside by the country folks. Ultimately, this disease becomes widespread - it just may well take time, possibly years. Let us assume that ultimately there is a 60% infection rate. That is 198 million. A death rate of 5% is a staggering 9.9 million. At a death rate of one-half percent, you are still at 990,000. "If" no vaccine is developed and injected, "then" with successive waves of this virus out into the population, including the countryside, it is plausible to start looking at one million dead. Don't anybody kid yourself: this is a nasty little disease. Very nasty. And right now, nobody knows which way it might mutate. It may well mutate to a non-lethal form, and become just another background irritant from China, much like bedbugs and the emerald ash borer, but that is not pre-ordained. Americans have no immunity to these Chinese viruses, and it is undetermined how this plays out. Sorry to be a wet blanket. The infection rate in NYC is 39%. The deaths while tested positive for CV19 are not all CV19 deaths. The comorbidities account for well over 90% of deaths. Meaning that the stats overstate CV19 deaths at hospital. They don't capture CV19 deaths outside the hospital. Considering how many had sought medical assistance for this disease symptoms, as treatment has been free, it is far less likely that the number of CV19 deaths at home were as high as they had been in Wuhan. So the deaths number is very likely substantially overstated in the State statistics. Thus the mortality is significantly smaller from that side, so the lead fear is not from the mortality of the disease, but the possibility of overwhelming the hospital system. If NYC was overwhelmed with 39% infected (at the low end of my estimates), it will not be by a second wave. The remaining 60% include a large minority of people who do not socialize closely much and do not use public transport (or crowded elevators or crowded bars) and have low transmission risk jobs or are retired. The rest will be infected at a lower rate of transmission than the 39% that were infected in the first wave, because R0 will have been reduced by about half because the 39% of the people that are most exposed to transmission and for which R0 could have been as high as 10 or more, already had it and will not transmit the next wave. The actual infection mortality rate is anywhere from a high boundary of 0.5% for NYC if CV19 was indeed the cause o f death for all registered as having the infection when they died (very doubtful), to 0.03% in California. In any case, the 5% headline number is utter nonsense and reflects only positive tests now administered to all who come into the hospital for whatever reason. Looking back to the peak of the hospitalizations, the testing was triaged uniquely to those with CV19 symptoms (similar to many other respiratory tract infections), we know then that of the people infected, fewer than 6% got tested, meaning had sufficient symptoms to convince a doctor to send them for the test. The prison outbreak data will inform us much better than the extremely varied demographic and exposure factors happening in cities. In the rural South, infections are acquired by commuters to nearby cities, and much less so by local community transmission. I assume that is the same in Vermont. 1 4 Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
0R0 + 6,251 April 30, 2020 1 hour ago, Ernst Reim said: I just read the link Tom provided for that report. Your statement has two main errors: "published studies/papers" and "clear efficacy". First, many if not most of the cited studies have neither been published nor peer-reviewed. Second, they do not show any "clear efficacy" as one would define it in the medical field. It is actually a pretty badly written piece: - Several of those 22 are not studies at all. For example, a video conference of a Korean taskforce agreeing on "treatment principles for patients with COVID-19", which included CQ/HCQ. That is not evidence that it worked. They were simply agreeing to hit patients with antivirals if there is no other option: "If patients are old or have underlying conditions with serious symptoms, physicians should consider an antiviral treatment as soon as possible. lopinavir 400mg/ritonavir 100mg (Kaletra two tablets, twice a day) or chloroquine 500mg orally per day. Alternate is hydroxychloroquine 400mg orally per day." - A lot of studies evidence in-vitro activity. This is promising of course, but far from "clear efficacy" in live patients. - It starts with a 2005 report of in-vitro efficiency of CQ vs. SARS. What is this even doing here? Or at least how does this lead to the "efficient treatment" conclusion ? And last but not least : Five or six of the whole bunch are Raoult papers. That guy is not without reason attacked in the medical community for its shoddy methodology. I commented somewhere else on the feeble evidence in the Raoult studies. It is a non-blinded, non-randomized study which nevertheless saw a 0.5% fatality rate and another 1.5% still hospitalized with unknown outcome. This is just plain not enough of a difference to standard-of-care for a non-blinded, non-randomized study. The conclusion of the report then ignores all but two of the papers, but at least starts with the self-limiting statement "Dependent upon a successful peer review of the data presented in 1,061 COVID-19 patients, [...] by D. Raoult [...] and a successful review of the 10 April 2020 paper by Zhaowei Chen et.al,..." It might still turn out that HCQ works or works in combination with other drugs. (Personally, I strongly doubt that any of the current antivirals will be a wondercure, but that's simply my opinion.) But there is currently not any "clear evidence" for HCQ efficacy that would justify to favor this drug over any others. If you do believe in it, go ahead, you guess is as good as mine. But please do not use this "report" as an argument for your case. It makes your position **way** too easy to attack. You are insisting on ignoring evidence in order to maintain a panic narrative in your mind. The HCQ and CQ were found to be too slow to act on their own. Dr. Roult thus tested it with another drug, azythromycin that is known to attack the RNA duplication process of infected cells, the HCQ treatment is only useful in conjunction with azythromycin. HCQ results in Dr. Raoults trial were better than Remdesivir from Gilead. Nobody is saying that HCQ should be favored over something else, it is part of the arsenal in the pharmacopia. perhaps famotidine will join the ranks too. The more options are available the better. Having a cheap drug with known and tolerable risks allows early intervention when symptoms are still mild and avoidance of a significant portion of hospitalizations and deaths and shortening of the contagion period. Doctors know whom is at risk when taking each of these drugs. The criteria by which Dr Fauci lauded remdesivir are the same ones that were met by Dr Raoult's HCQ/Z protocol, where virus loads were reduced to udetectable within 5-10 days at various early to serious stage infections. The only difference of substance made public so far is that nobody makes money off of HCQ/Z, but Gilead stands to make a fortune. The much less material difference is that the control group was without treatments while the remdesivir trial was on placebo and the HCQ/z control was not treated in the same setting. Watch for Fauci's department obtaining a gigantic donation from Gilead. It will explain it all. 5 Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Ernst Reim + 33 ER April 30, 2020 13 minutes ago, Coffeeguyzz said: She - this doctor - had never heard of the world's (acclaimed) #1 epidemiologist, Dr. Didier Raoult, nor - obviously - of his study involving 1,061 infected patients. Dr. Didier Raoult is not the "world's (acclaimed) #1 epidemiologist". Far from it. The majority of the experts in drug development consider him a dangerous quack. Because he should not better, but still believes that he can do studies without control groups, because "it is unethical". > The success rate was ONLY 98%, as I beleive you noted. Yes, he had 98% success rate in a disease where 95-99% of the patients would be expected to survive without any treatment. And he decided which patients to include in his study (selector's bias). The study was not randomized, thus comparison to the general population is not possible. There was no control group, so you would expect a 30% placebo effect. And on, and on, and on. Without any aggression towards the doctors at the fore-front: other then for really radical results, they are not the best ones to judge the efficiency of a drug where you have to differentiate between 2% of your patients dying and 1%. To make an extreme example: Doctors in the middle-age subscribed blood-letting not because they were superstitious idiots. They prescribed it because their mentors taught them that and because it worked in their own experience. The whole medical community is not paid by pharma. Actually university-based clinicians would have wet dreams about publishing a high efficacy study of HCQ. 1 Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Coffeeguyzz + 454 GM April 30, 2020 Mr. Warnick The study is being referenced/linked all over the net with the original reporting on 'iltempo.it/salute/2020/04/28-coronavirus-ta-farmci ... 'and a whole bunch more gobbledygook. Article written by Peter D'Angelo for Il Tempo.it. (Today's Gateway Pundit site, Jim Hoft author, links it). Originally written in spaghetti, but goog translation available. Interesting piece that describes the suspected mechanics of how the virus actually attacks the hemoglobin-carrying capacity of the red blood cells. This has been noted umpteen times by online doctors everywhere these past few weeks but, quelle surprise, has received no mainstream attention. The Il Tempo piece describes - in the last paragraph - how 1,200 Italian rheumatologists were surveyed concerning their collective 65,000 patients who were all taking HCQ. Of this 65,000 cohort, 20 were found to have been infected. None in ICU. No fatalities. 1 3 Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Ernst Reim + 33 ER April 30, 2020 8 minutes ago, 0R0 said: You are insisting on ignoring evidence in order to maintain a panic narrative in your mind. The criteria by which Dr Fauci lauded remdesivir are the same ones that were met by Dr Raoult's HCQ/Z protocol, where virus loads were reduced to udetectable within 5-10 days at various early to serious stage infections. The only difference of substance made public so far is that nobody makes money off of HCQ/Z, but Gilead stands to make a fortune. The much less material difference is that the control group was without treatments while the remdesivir trial was on placebo and the HCQ/z control was not treated in the same setting. Watch for Fauci's department obtaining a gigantic donation from Gilead. It will explain it all. Your insistence that anybody disagreeing with you is blind to the facts and panicked really starts to piss me off. OK, perhaps before you compare the Raoult snake-oil stuff with the Gilead trial, spend a few hours to read up what randomized and blinded trials are and why they are important. I am not ignoring evidence, because it **is not evidence**! I do not say that HCQ cannot work. There are currently trials done on it. But Raoult's stuff is crap and anybody insisting on using this as basis for their argumentation has no leg to stand on. 1 1 1 Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites