A government-funded analysis found hydroxychloroquine ineffective for COVID-19, increases risk of death

[Enthalpic + 1,496]

17 minutes ago, Tom Kirkman said:

 

It seems Trump has to push Remdesivir at this point because it gives enough hope to open up the country.

Your rose coloured glasses for trump...

Alternatively, he is being a classic "business man" and is making money with / off those pharma companies.

 

[SUZNV + 1,197]

Covid19  exposed US and Western World nowadays are so corrupted in many level and nothing you can do in 4 years. If you are CEO in a sinking ship and kicking out every employees immediately is not an option, not to mention  they are trying to pull down the whole company, then not much  you can do. The problems lies in many  previous and now politicians in both parties.

The best way all of us should do in the beginning: wear a mask in public transports, social distancing as much as we can in works since Wuhan locked down. It is basic survival skills in a over crowded city. It is proven in many countries are successful blocking COVID19 this way. Then would be no political argument about why governments didn't do this and that, no argument in what medicine approach are betters, less people dies and we still have an economy. Our healthcare systems were never designed for a pandemics, just like our houses were never designed to be indestructible. 

Lock down sooner or later or more testing for containment is useless, Covid19 will not disappear , the moment we stop the lock down, it will spread out if we don't do the above and it surely cause recession where lots of people will lose jobs, houses.. If we don't have enough infected people die, there is no financial motivation for R&D a vaccine or special cure. We will all reach herd immunity eventually, the tests will only indicate the estimated level of herd immunity. Vaccine in this maybe as good as flu vaccine, at best. 

What should people in Taiwan, Japan... think about us? We have so much freedom and be proud of it yet we depend on governments to advice us to wear mask in public when we all know a disease is coming (even we  don't know big or small, this will have to rely on China and WHO data). If governors don't issue a lock down  edict, then we keep partying and gathering when we know a disease is coming? If we did well enough, governments wouldn't need to do anything. And now we turn back and tell Governments didn't do well enough, don't have enough masks, ventilation, lockdown sooner..., even more we blame it is all Trump's fault, or our Prime Ministers/Presidents  acted better than Trump? All Western Governments did a poor jobs, the same with their Citizens, if compares ourselves to Japanese,Taiwanese and their governments? 

Do we really worry for the US and the Western World, life and economy? Do we have compassionate for many unnecessary deaths? Do we want to make sure it will not happen in the future? Or we just simply find someone to blame for our own stupidity, ignorance? Or we think it is a good opportunity for us to be right all the time about someone? Do we read media news to accumulate knowledge, to have information for analysis, to see debate on both sides, to understand more about the world  or we just want to be assured we were right by your own trust-able sources, just for the sake of our ego? Or we want to make money from the Pharmacy stocks? I cannot see how lock down sooner or more test coverage can help anything in new coming diseases in the future.

It's just like you didn't wear a condom and blame government for HIV because government didn't prepare condom for you or didn't lock you up. Your expectation on your government is too high and unrealistic.

 

Edited April 30, 2020 by SUZNV

[Ward Smith + 6,615]

1 hour ago, Ernst Reim said:

PS: What really pisses me off about Raoult is the fact that he justifies avoiding control groups because "it is unethical to kill people". Heck, he does not know beforehand if HCQ helps.He does not even now for sure that it does not make matters worse. He starts from the fact that he's right and the whole study is based on this asssumption. And even if... there are ways around this. You can introduce control groups by delayed administration: Everybody is treated for three weeks, the control group gets 1 week placebo and then medication. If you randomize your control group and blind patients and researchers against who is on placebo for one week, you would see the control group going down on virus count one week later and thus prove the efficacy of HCQ!

You're so off the rails I don't think you're coming back, but to fix a few of the errors let me point out that Raoult did not invent this treatment. He followed the science out of China (before they started clamping down on information). It was Chinese scientists, mostly communicating via WeChat who determined quite unequivocally that people with lupus, who also were being treated with hydroxychloroquine for that disease were not falling victim to Wuhan virus. BTW the Chinese call it the Wuhan virus, those sneaky racists. There were husbands on hcq whose wives and children were getting sicker than dogs, some dying, while they remained perfectly healthy. The Chinese doctors were smart enough to ask why. 

For an example of stupid doctors (or simply unethical) we can look at the "study" done here where they tried to correlate all lupus patients with Covid 19, while carefully neglecting to determine what treatment they were receiving. Recognize there are more than a dozen ways to treat lupus, hcq is merely one of those. In this country roughly 25% of lupus patients are on hcq. Coincidentally, the bogus "study" showed 25% of lupus patients weren't coming down with the disease. 

But yeah, Trump bad ideas, destroy everything Trump recommends, guzzle the kool aid, who cares that it's coming courtesy of the Jim Jones media. 

[Eyes Wide Open + 3,555]

1 hour ago, Ernst Reim said:

Honestly, please read up on clinical trials and effect size. Sorry, but " the viral levels which are the output of the trial are hardly going to be affected by blind and randomized conditions. " is really plain wrong! Of course they are! That's why trials are randomized and blinded!

To go over this, again:

Placebo effect: It is known for decades, with hard, scientific evidence, that the placebo effect is real. That people have been cured of cancer because they were told that some distilled water is a newly developed wunder drug. Thus **any** medication in which people believe will have better results than no treatment, regardless whether the medication actually helps. If you would make a survey of HCQ treatment, nobody in clinical research would be surprised that HCQ helps Republican voters more than Democratic voters. Just plain because Trump advocated it and Republican voters trust him more. The power of believe is known. Now, the very charismatic rebel doctor Raoult

treats a group of volunteers with a drug. Of course, there will be a huge placebo effect! And yes, that will effect even "absolute values" such as virus load. If you treat terminal cancer patients and you achieve 50% survival, then you do not need a control group, since you compare to 100% expected fatality. But if you compare to something with such a small effect size as COVID-19, where most patients recover anyway on their own, nobody can take 2% death vs. 1-5% seriously if you do not have a control group and blind your trial.

Selection bias: Since Raoult decided not to use a control group, he has to compare his results against outside standard-of-care results. In controlled studies, people are either randomly distributed between control group and medication group or you use a randomized version of how you select patients. But you never let the actual guy running the study decide whom to include and whom to exclude. Even if you assume that he is absolutely objective (and, heck, I do not!) the existence of unconcious selection bias is also well established. Think about it: he just needed to have 2-5 patients with some pre-existing conditions which he considered "not suitable" for his study to strongly influence the results. (Again : effect size! Would not matter for terminal cancer patients.)

Even if you ignore this, he compares to general standard of care results. Which is impossible, because he cannot compare his 1000 patients to the whole population pretending that they are a representative example. We do not even know for sure what the actual fatality rate is exactly. But we know that it depends strongly on age. That it depends strongly on coexisting conditions. That it depends on race, but we do not know if that's genetics or just $$$. That is why he should have used a control group, randomly selected from the people participating in his study!

Counting bias. Another well established factor in clinical trials that if the evaluating scientist knows which patient is treated with medication and which with placebo, the results look better than if he does not know. Again, not because they are all cheaters, but because human brains are made to look for patterns and we unconsciously do this. 

All this would not matter if standard of care would be 50% fatality and he goes down to 10%. But it does matter with COVID19. It has nothing to do with "checking for crossed "t" and dotted "i"". It has something to do with the fact that his error bars are larger than his results.

I am not dumping on HCQ because of any anti-Trump feelings. I am not even convinced that HCQ does not work. (I am convinced that we would have seen much better hard evidence if it would be really a wonder drug.) But I am dumping on Raoult's results because they are plain useless even if HCQ works! If that guy would have done a decent job instead of having a "I am a great scientist, I do not need controls because I know that I am right" attitude, then we would know by now whether HCQ is an effective treatment and could have adapted our treatment plans accordingly. Instead he slowed everything down. HCQ trials are now a no-win game for researchers: if they find that HCQ helps, all the fame goes to the *&$ Raoult, even though they actually did the work. If they find HCQ to be ineffective, they get ripped apart by part of the media and get death threats on twitter. HCQ trials are running, but I would be surprised if they get a very big press.

PS: What really pisses me off about Raoult is the fact that he justifies avoiding control groups because "it is unethical to kill people". Heck, he does not know beforehand if HCQ helps.He does not even now for sure that it does not make matters worse. He starts from the fact that he's right and the whole study is based on this asssumption. And even if... there are ways around this. You can introduce control groups by delayed administration: Everybody is treated for three weeks, the control group gets 1 week placebo and then medication. If you randomize your control group and blind patients and researchers against who is on placebo for one week, you would see the control group going down on virus count one week later and thus prove the efficacy of HCQ!

Why such a lengthy narrative, this placebo effect you speak to is short lived and as now i cannot find the % of those that seem to receive a short benefit. 

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-8266737/Doctors-group-claims-hydroxychloroquine-helps-91-coronavirus-patients.html

[Ernst Reim + 33]

I copy here some information from the Derek Lowe blog on the latest Remdesivir results and comparison to HCQ. The advantage here is that this is somebody who can evaluate results based on reliability (which puts him in a different boat than all of us):

" Now we have bits of data from an NIAID/NIH trial of the drug that began enrolling in Nebraska in late February [...] This one was double-blinded and placebo-controlled: [...] The primary endpoint was improved time to recovery (discharge from the hospital or ability to return to normal activity), and it appears that remdesivir was statistically better than placebo: 11 days versus 15 days. The team also monitored overall survival in the >1000 patients, and there was a possible trend towards the drug, but it did not reach statistical significance (8% mortality in the treatment group, 11.6% in the placebo group). That’s it. Those are the numbers we have.

[...] The other piece of news is this paper in The Lancet describing a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial in China with 237 patients – in fact, the very one that was halted suddenly.[...] But in this one, the use of the drug was not associated with a shorter time to clinical improvement.[...] Mortality was identical between the two groups, although there was again a trend (not significant) towards less mortality on remdesivir in the shorter-duration patients, and thus a trend towards higher mortality in the others. The viral load was checked in both the upper and lower respiratory tracts of the patients, and remdesivir had no effect whatsoever on it compared to placebo, in any group. So that paper’s results are not very impressive, frankly, [...]

Taken together, the picture that’s emerging is that remdesivir may be of some help in less-severe cases. It is not a cure; a cure would have shown up in the trials we’ve run already, and cures are mighty thin on the ground for viral diseases. We can hope that the time-to-recovery is actually a useful measure and that the drug might get people out of hospitals a bit earlier, and hope a bit harder that there really is a mortality difference that will turn out to be real as we go into larger and larger numbers of patients. But working against that is the possibility that wider use of the drug will obscure the effect rather than make it more obvious.

To forestall some questions that I know will come up: what do I think about this versus hydroxychloroquine? Well, we have more controlled data to work with on remdesivir, for one thing, so whatever benefits there are, are more obvious. The balance of what controlled data we have on HCQ is negative, and here we’re at least more mixed. There is also (to the best of my knowledge) no particular safety signal for remdesivir, as opposed to HCQ (particularly the HCQ/azithromycin combination). So while I’m not bowled over, I’m more optimistic than I am about hydroxychloroquine."

Take home message from one of the guys working in "big pharma" on drug development (although not directly in this area): Currently there is no indication from any reliable data that we have a cure or at least an effective drug at hand. Please note that it criticizes Remdesivir as well as HCQ and all based on the reliable data available. If you start reading this with the conviction that you cannot trust anybody working in that business, then a) this won't convince you either and b) you are screwed anyway.

[Ernst Reim + 33]

1 minute ago, Eyes Wide Open said:

Why such a lengthy narrative, this placebo effect you speak to is short lived

This is just plain wrong. Nothing more needs to be said.

[Eyes Wide Open + 3,555]

2 minutes ago, Ernst Reim said:

This is just plain wrong. Nothing more needs to be said.

A question have you used the new estrogen therapy train of thought? Below is link from a cancer research group that does go into some detail about the Placebo Effect. 

 

https://www.cancer.org/treatment/treatments-and-side-effects/clinical-trials/placebo-effect.html

[Coffeeguyzz + 454]

In light of the announced expansions of lockdowns in Maine and - interestingly - California's state-owned beaches and parks - I re-visited the famous (infamous?) Milgram Experiment to glean further understanding of what I am witnessing.

Interesting stuff.

Furthering this voluntary/involuntary suicidal (homicidal?) collective course of action, I have just learned of a small number of middle aged small business owners in the San Francisco Bay area (where I lived for decades) throwing in the towel and acknowledging the complete, final destruction of their small enterprises. (Some food related, others in various fields).

Neither I nor, probably, they have any idea what the future may bring, but I Gar. Own. Tee. To one and all ... the economic, social, political fallout from this nightmare has barely begun.

[Ward Smith + 6,615]

7 minutes ago, Ernst Reim said:

This is just plain wrong. Nothing more needs to be said.

You're just plain wrong about The placebo effect especially your Bullshit numbers. 

Yes, there's a placebo effect, but it is primarily effective on "diseases" that aren't really diseases. Menopause? Depression? Sure but your 30% number if applied to say, pancreatic cancer would be ten times better than the supposed cure! What's it like to go through life so clueless while pretending to be brilliant? Asking for a friend

[Ward Smith + 6,615]

26 minutes ago, Coffeeguyzz said:

In light of the announced expansions of lockdowns in Maine and - interestingly - California's state-owned beaches and parks - I re-visited the famous (infamous?) Milgram Experiment to glean further understanding of what I am witnessing.

Interesting stuff.

Furthering this voluntary/involuntary suicidal (homicidal?) collective course of action, I have just learned of a small number of middle aged small business owners in the San Francisco Bay area (where I lived for decades) throwing in the towel and acknowledging the complete, final destruction of their small enterprises. (Some food related, others in various fields).

Neither I nor, probably, they have any idea what the future may bring, but I Gar. Own. Tee. To one and all ... the economic, social, political fallout from this nightmare has barely begun.

Remember, the liberals have made no secret of the fact they want Universal Basic Income (UBI). Naturally the conservatives will oppose this for the obvious reason that it won't freaking work! But hey, if they can force 33% of the population into penury by their asinine quarantine of the healthy instead of the sick, they're confident that 33% added to their current welfare recipients will put them in power forevermore, or until we get conquered by Belize because we're so weak by then. 

Meanwhile, all the doom and gloom folks need to read about the far more deadly Hong Kong flu, which we somehow survived without destroying the country

[Ernst Reim + 33]

1 hour ago, Eyes Wide Open said:

A question have you used the new estrogen therapy train of thought? Below is link from a cancer research group that does go into some detail about the Placebo Effect. 

https://www.cancer.org/treatment/treatments-and-side-effects/clinical-trials/placebo-effect.html

I admit of having gotten a bit short-tempered with the praise of the Raoult study and my reply was a bit more autocratic than necessary... or justified.

But COVID-19 is not cancer. The placebo effect is strongest, I admit, in "diseases" which rely heavily on patient reporting, such as pain, depression etc. I was surprised that current info puts it to nil on the purely organic level (I have not looked that up in detail in years). I take this as new information and as given right now, perhaps I'll find some time to read up on it.

Infectious diseases, however, are somewhat in the middle between pain/depression and cancer. I did only a fast fact-check on myself right now, but I readily found two studies showing a placebo effect on typical respiratory tract infections not replying on patient reporting. So "activating the immune system" might still be possible with placebo.

But ignore, if you will, the whole placebo part above. My remaining arguments for blinded, randomized trials pertain and are - in fact - strongly supported in your link.

And, since my first answer was indeed rude, let me comment on the Dailymail article you linked: this seemed indeed well written. But it also makes the strong point that rushing to help with unproven drugs won't necessarily benefit us: "In fact, when the West African Ebola crisis began, researchers rushed to create treatments and conduct quick compassionate studies without placebo arms because it seemed cruel to deny some patients of potential treatments. But many of those early tests ultimately failed, and as a result it took years for an effective treatment for the devastating hemorrhagic fever to be found."

Edited April 30, 2020 by Ernst Reim

[Ernst Reim + 33]

1 hour ago, Ward Smith said:

You're just plain wrong about The placebo effect especially your Bullshit numbers. 

Yes, there's a placebo effect, but it is primarily effective on "diseases" that aren't really diseases. Menopause? Depression? Sure but your 30% number if applied to say, pancreatic cancer would be ten times better than the supposed cure! What's it like to go through life so clueless while pretending to be brilliant? Asking for a friend

Did you read your link? " Some studies show that there are actual physical changes that occur with the placebo effect. "

As I said above, my reply was unnecessarily autocratic since I am feeling a bit too strongly about the Raoult studies. But I never said placebo cured 30% of cancer. I said somewhere else that the placebo effect has been shown "to be up to 30%". And I said above in another text "That people have been cured of cancer... " According to EWO's reply and link, I might be wrong on that or relying on outdated info. But honestly, harking on that one number does not make the Raoult study any better.

[Tom Kirkman + 8,860]

Babylon Bee makes a music video  : )

"Let the Clorox flow"

https://mobile.twitter.com/TheBabylonBee/status/1255931730411700224

 

[Ernst Reim + 33]

1 hour ago, Ward Smith said:

Meanwhile, all the doom and gloom folks need to read about the far more deadly Hong Kong flu, which we somehow survived without destroying the country

The Hong-Kong flu ended up killing 100 000 people in the US. COVID-19 is not yet over, much harsher measures taken and still has killed already 60 000 people in the US. I do not think it is justified calling the Hong-Kong flu far more deadly. COVID-19 at least has the potential to be worth.

And could you get off your US-egotism? The whole world went into lock down. But because in the US that was because of the left-wing media and the political agenda of the democrats. This does not mean that the lock down was the best possible reply. But it just has plain nothing to do with any left-wing conspiracy.

[Ward Smith + 6,615]

9 minutes ago, Ernst Reim said:

Did you read your link? " Some studies show that there are actual physical changes that occur with the placebo effect. "

As I said above, my reply was unnecessarily autocratic since I am feeling a bit too strongly about the Raoult studies. But I never said placebo cured 30% of cancer. I said somewhere else that the placebo effect has been shown "to be up to 30%". And I said above in another text "That people have been cured of cancer... " According to EWO's reply and link, I might be wrong on that or relying on outdated info. But honestly, harking on that one number does not make the Raoult study any better.

Look prayer cures cancer, but only if you have enough faith in it. Funny thing, faith. It's what let's Seth Curry let loose from 75 feet away from the basket and turn around before it even goes in. Because he has faith in his shot. Just like patients have faith in their doctors. 

Letting people die while you're giving them sugar pills "for science" is right out of the dark ages. All so some guy named Ernst is satisfied with the outcome? BTW there's massive ongoing trials with hqc right now. Too bad for the schmucks getting sugar pills while their own doctors are taking the same drug as a prophylactic. But yeah, science over faith. 

[Ward Smith + 6,615]

2 minutes ago, Ernst Reim said:

The Hong-Kong flu ended up killing 100 000 people in the US. COVID-19 is not yet over, much harsher measures taken and still has killed already 60 000 people in the US. I do not think it is justified calling the Hong-Kong flu far more deadly. COVID-19 at least has the potential to be worth.

And could you get off your US-egotism? The whole world went into lock down. But because in the US that was because of the left-wing media and the political agenda of the democrats. This does not mean that the lock down was the best possible reply. But it just has plain nothing to do with any left-wing conspiracy.

There's ample evidence that deaths are being wrongly attributed to Covid19 in this country, Italy, France and elsewhere. I've posted the links on this, no conspiracy. 

The "whole world" hasn't locked down but the left leaning world (which sans Trump includes the US) sure has. Leftists and globalists are loving this!

[0R0 + 6,251]

2 hours ago, Ernst Reim said:

I admit of having gotten a bit short-tempered with the praise of the Raoult study and my reply was a bit more autocratic than necessary... or justified.

But COVID-19 is not cancer. The placebo effect is strongest, I admit, in "diseases" which rely heavily on patient reporting, such as pain, depression etc. I was surprised that current info puts it to nil on the purely organic level (I have not looked that up in detail in years). I take this as new information and as given right now, perhaps I'll find some time to read up on it.

Infectious diseases, however, are somewhat in the middle between pain/depression and cancer. I did only a fast fact-check on myself right now, but I readily found two studies showing a placebo effect on typical respiratory tract infections not replying on patient reporting. So "activating the immune system" might still be possible with placebo.

But ignore, if you will, the whole placebo part above. My remaining arguments for blinded, randomized trials pertain and are - in fact - strongly supported in your link.

And, since my first answer was indeed rude, let me comment on the Dailymail article you linked: this seemed indeed well written. But it also makes the strong point that rushing to help with unproven drugs won't necessarily benefit us: "In fact, when the West African Ebola crisis began, researchers rushed to create treatments and conduct quick compassionate studies without placebo arms because it seemed cruel to deny some patients of potential treatments. But many of those early tests ultimately failed, and as a result it took years for an effective treatment for the devastating hemorrhagic fever to be found."

That is fine to do a placebo controlled trial. Just notify the participants that they may end up on placebo and not the treatment and see if you can do the study.

The bottom line is that certainty is worth much less in these circumstances that probability. IF you can get the study done, then do it. The difference in the viral count trajectories was substantial in the HCQ/z trials. I would take the drugs on that basis readily.  Particularly as the QT elongation pattern of the drug has not been associated with any mortality. 

As to medical scientists who can't deal with minor deviations from utter certainty, I think they need to adopt a new profession. The FDA needs to be cured of its addiction to meaningless certainty. Or the field of medicine could be cured of the FDA. 

Unfortunately, the malice of government and its hangers on knows no bound as the lockdowns demonstrate. I think that this experience has taught us that public health should be removed from the domain of government entirely. And the emergency powers of government at any level terminated entirely. So that nobody is ever under the delusion that being governor also makes them absolute monarch because the say there is an emergency. 

[0R0 + 6,251]

2 hours ago, Ernst Reim said:

The Hong-Kong flu ended up killing 100 000 people in the US. COVID-19 is not yet over, much harsher measures taken and still has killed already 60 000 people in the US. I do not think it is justified calling the Hong-Kong flu far more deadly. COVID-19 at least has the potential to be worth.

And could you get off your US-egotism? The whole world went into lock down. But because in the US that was because of the left-wing media and the political agenda of the democrats. This does not mean that the lock down was the best possible reply. But it just has plain nothing to do with any left-wing conspiracy.

They did because Americans did. Had the US not followed the deranged example of China because that was the only one that was done in size, then things would have been fine. But the administration was hoodwinked into panic and gave governors cover with the guidelines. They fell for the conspiracy, they were naive thinking that the people who they have been trying to take down will not take the lowest road possible to maintain their power and the flow from the gravy train. 

The lockdown was never necessary. It never made any sense from any perspective. We already knew that it was not deadly for the bulk of the population by mid February, and that the isolation of the high risk group was sufficient. But instead, the "experts" - led by the WHO, told us not to use masks and Fauci went on TV to demonstrate that he doesn't understand how an N95 mask works - precisely the reverse of what he said. Then the CDC claimed that fabric masks don't work, which was also wrong. There was a conspiracy, it has been widely disseminated in fine detail and you can read about it at length.  It was just an updated version of an even older conspiracy. Those conspiracies hang around us all the time looking for an opportunity and broader partnerships with people who are not quite aboard. This opportunity was timed too well to let it go as it had Democratic support throughout the party in addition to the normal corporate and internationalist socialist ideologues in the Billionaire's club. 

 

[0R0 + 6,251]

4 hours ago, Coffeeguyzz said:

Furthering this voluntary/involuntary suicidal (homicidal?) collective course of action, I have just learned of a small number of middle aged small business owners in the San Francisco Bay area (where I lived for decades) throwing in the towel and acknowledging the complete, final destruction of their small enterprises. (Some food related, others in various fields).

 

Are they organizing to sue the governor into submission and starting a recall petition? 

[0R0 + 6,251]

3 hours ago, Ernst Reim said:

The Hong-Kong flu ended up killing 100 000 people in the US. COVID-19 is not yet over, much harsher measures taken and still has killed already 60 000 people in the US. I do not think it is justified calling the Hong-Kong flu far more deadly. COVID-19 at least has the potential to be worth.

 

As pointed out to you many times, the convention for recording deaths due to CV19 is any cause of death and a CV19 positive test. The reason this was done, other than fomenting panic, is to get data easily by electronic means without human interpretation of cause of death. The folks that accounting of cause of death  are about 10% into the records and are heavily discouraged from doing it, though it is standard medical practice.

We don't know the results yet, we do know that the numbers we are getting substantially overstate the mortality. If the direct scouring of the records by Dr. Erricson at his hospital is the thing to go by, then he implies only 1/3 of CV19 attributed deaths are actually due to the disease rather than the comorbidities alone. 

In any case, the broad mortality rate is in the 0.1% range at most and can be as low as 0,01% and 0.03% average for CA. The mortality for those under 65 is under 0.01%. Which we knew as early as mid February. The Global lockdown response was distinctly the most wrong thing to do. The governors who insist on maintaining it will have their heads handed to them when Trump doesn't let the State bailout get through the Senate and strongarms all of them into opening up in  order to get a maybe little bailout. I am sure there will be a conditionality of not reimposing a general lockdown.  

 

[Jim Profit + 46]

19 hours ago, Ernst Reim said:

This is not a reported study. This is a doctor commenting in a newspaper about a study he has heard of:

"To assess the possible correlations between chronic patients and Covid19, SIR interrogated 1,200 rheumatologists throughout Italy to collect statistics on infections. Out of an audience of 65,000 chronic patients (Lupus and Rheumatoid Arthritis), who systematically take Plaquenil / hydroxychloroquine, only 20 patients tested positive for the virus. Nobody died, nobody is in intensive care, according to the data collected so far."

If this turns out to be correct that would - even retroactively - indicate a very high relevance for the prophylactic effect of HCQ. You will forgive me, however, that in a world where former Nobel prize winners claim in podcasts that the coronavirus was genengineered from the AIDS virus, I will wait until I actually see the actually study, before I believe what a reporter said a doctor said a society had found when they asked their members. Again, regardless whether this is true or not, "Jim said that Paul said" is not evidence.

And please, the article was written in Italian, not "spaghetti".

Edit: the hemoglobin attack mechanism is currently debated. Again, this is based on a not-peer reviewed study and several experts disgree with the ability of a virus to pull iron out of heme. That is far from easy. As I said, one of the current proposals of viral action, but not established fact.

Here is the study https://www.reumatologia.it/cmsx.asp?IDPg=1107

Seems that doctors have to voluntarly submit the COVID-19 cases. As we don't how many case weren't reported we can't know the prevalence. Also in the same italian news article there is mention of another study, whose result are misrepresented.. Also in the latest report 147 cases were reported, amongst them 20 were taking HCQ, 14 were taking immunodepressant drugs, so using the same flawed logic couln't we conclude that immunodepressant drugs are even more efficient ? We don't know the popularity of each drug used by patients..So the study don't make the claim made in the article and its data does'nt support.

Another misleading cleam from the article "For now, in support of this "prophylaxis" effect, there is a recent publication, involving 211 people. It was published in the International Journal of Antimicrobial Agents, the official body of the International Society of Antimicrobial Chemotherapy. Of 211 people exposed to Covid positive 19 and undergoing hydroxychloroquine prophylaxis, none were infected."

From the study (https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S092485792030145X?via=ihub)

"A total of 92 hospital staff, including physicians and nurses, showed negative PCR results after 14 days of quarantine even though they did not receive PEP." "From these results, we could not conclude that PEP is effective for prevention of COVID-19 in close contacts" "Randomized clinical studies are needed to evaluate whether PEP is an effective option for an outbreak response strategy against COVID-19 in LTCHs."

Also regarding the author of the article, Peter d'angelo, he only wrote five articles in "Il tempo", every of them preaching the virtues of chloroquine or hydroxychloroquine..And "Il tempo" seems very politized, very partisan, not the kind of media I would get medical news from..

 

[Ward Smith + 6,615]

16 minutes ago, Jim Profit said:

Here is the study https://www.reumatologia.it/cmsx.asp?IDPg=1107

Seems that doctors have to voluntarly submit the COVID-19 cases. As we don't how many case weren't reported we can't know the prevalence. Also in the same italian news article there is mention of another study, whose result are misrepresented.. Also in the latest report 147 cases were reported, amongst them 20 were taking HCQ, 14 were taking immunodepressant drugs, so using the same flawed logic couln't we conclude that immunodepressant drugs are even more efficient ? We don't know the popularity of each drug used by patients..So the study don't make the claim made in the article and its data does'nt support.

Another misleading cleam from the article "For now, in support of this "prophylaxis" effect, there is a recent publication, involving 211 people. It was published in the International Journal of Antimicrobial Agents, the official body of the International Society of Antimicrobial Chemotherapy. Of 211 people exposed to Covid positive 19 and undergoing hydroxychloroquine prophylaxis, none were infected."

From the study (https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S092485792030145X?via=ihub)

"A total of 92 hospital staff, including physicians and nurses, showed negative PCR results after 14 days of quarantine even though they did not receive PEP." "From these results, we could not conclude that PEP is effective for prevention of COVID-19 in close contacts" "Randomized clinical studies are needed to evaluate whether PEP is an effective option for an outbreak response strategy against COVID-19 in LTCHs."

Also regarding the author of the article, Peter d'angelo, he only wrote five articles in "Il tempo", every of them preaching the virtues of chloroquine or hydroxychloroquine..And "Il tempo" seems very politized, very partisan, not the kind of media I would get medical news from..

 

Perhaps English isn't your primary language. PEP means Post Exposure Prophylactic, which is exactly the same as saying you can put a condom on a week after you sleep with that skanky Thai prostitute to protect you from venereal disease. Let me know how that works for you. 

Meanwhile the same doctors pretending hcq doesn't work for you have been taking it for themselves and their family. But yeah, more study needed. 

[Jim Profit + 46]

6 minutes ago, Ward Smith said:

Perhaps English isn't your primary language. PEP means Post Exposure Prophylactic, which is exactly the same as saying you can put a condom on a week after you sleep with that skanky Thai prostitute to protect you from venereal disease. Let me know how that works for you. 

Meanwhile the same doctors pretending hcq doesn't work for you have been taking it for themselves and their family. But yeah, more study needed. 

For the PEP they used HCQ. So all in all, you agree that the study doesn't corroborate the claim from the newspaper regarding a supposed prophylaxis effect from HCQ 👍

[Jim Profit + 46]

4 hours ago, Ward Smith said:

There's ample evidence that deaths are being wrongly attributed to Covid19 in this country, Italy, France and elsewhere. I've posted the links on this, no conspiracy. 

The "whole world" hasn't locked down but the left leaning world (which sans Trump includes the US) sure has. Leftists and globalists are loving this!

You forgot the parenthesis around "globalists".. I found this article very interesting;..

46,000 Missing Deaths: Tracking the True Toll of the Coronavirus Outbreak

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/04/21/world/coronavirus-missing-deaths.html

Edited May 1, 2020 by Jim Profit

[Radha + 262]

Too many people who want to hold onto the panic and fear model no matter how much evidence is posted to the contrary.

And some accuse me of being a parrot? LOL

With every passing day it is becoming more obvious that the there is a far greater thing going on than politicians trying to "protect" the people.