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Ebola Is Now Curable

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Re: Ebola Is Now Curable

#52

Post by dragonwriter »

OnlineCourage wrote: post #51

WHO: two of the four drugs we thought would work did not work as well as expected. WIRED: EBOLA CURED https://www.niaid.nih.gov/news-events/independent-monitoring...

Both appear to be reasonable descriptions of the facts, mostly differing in being appropriate based on whether you had or had not already adopted the WHO’s positive expectations.

Re: Ebola Is Now Curable

#53

Post by IfOnlyYouKnew »

jcranmer wrote: post #43
dankohn1 wrote: post #29

There is no news I enjoy reading more than that a clinical trial had to be ended early because the treatment was so effective that it would be unethical to continue with alternative treatments (or a placebo).

Actually, it's quite terrifying when you remember that stopping a clinical trial early is a great way to create statistical fraud. https://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2019/08/08/st... cites an example of a drug whose clinical trial was stopped early due to obviously effective success... only to discover later on that the "obviously effective" was a statistically spurious event, and the drug did not confer…

It's only a "great way to create statistical fraud" if you assume that the statisticians, and the FDA, are either stupid or corrupt. And contrary to popular belief, they tend to be competent enough to at least cope with the sort of hair-brained schemes HN believes would fool them.[0]

Stopping a trial early and it's statistical implications should, by the way, be somewhat familiar with web developers: it's commonly done with A/B tests, and the related problem is the "One-armed bandit" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multi-armed_bandit#Empirical_m...)

[0]: Legend says they are even familiar with correlation != causation, and some have mastered the advanced skill of knowing that trial size matters, which is why they started, a few years back, to test drugs on more than one person.

Re: Ebola Is Now Curable

#54

Post by nyi »

xkcd-sucks wrote: post #28
DoreenMichele wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just as a point of comparison: Toxic epidermal necrolysis, a severe form of Stevens-Johnson Syndrome, has about a 30% mortality rate. I understand it to be a first world problem typically caused by taking certain strong medications. It's a severe and often deadly allergic reaction. (I'm not going to provide links because both Wikipedia entries have disturbing photos. I've verified that I'm spelling both correctly so…

Unpacking the name totally is even more brutal! "necro" -- "death" "lysis" -- "busting open" "epidermal" -- "skin" "syndrome" -- "no known cause" However, it's a little unclear why TEN is a point of comparison to Ebola, as one is a transmissible disease and one is something that happens to unlucky people typically in response to common small-molecule drugs. I guess TEN sounds like a probable side effect of antiviral…

Is syndrome = "no known cause" a common definition?

Re: Ebola Is Now Curable

#55

Post by hyper_reality »

jcranmer wrote: post #43
dankohn1 wrote: post #29

There is no news I enjoy reading more than that a clinical trial had to be ended early because the treatment was so effective that it would be unethical to continue with alternative treatments (or a placebo).

Actually, it's quite terrifying when you remember that stopping a clinical trial early is a great way to create statistical fraud. https://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2019/08/08/st... cites an example of a drug whose clinical trial was stopped early due to obviously effective success... only to discover later on that the "obviously effective" was a statistically spurious event, and the drug did not confer…

Statistics Done Wrong has a great chapter on this: https://www.statisticsdonewrong.com/regression.html

Re: Ebola Is Now Curable

#58

Post by kijin »

Retric wrote: post #19
bifrost wrote: post #2

This is awesome that we've seen another horrendous disease go from incurable to curable in my lifetime. While ebola hasn't touched my community like AIDS/HIV has, reading this cracked my RBF and I smiled.

A 6% to 30% fatality rate depending on how early the treatment is not what I would call a cure. However, at best 6% fatality rate is still huge progress.

That fatality rate could be the difference between "Meh, I'll probably die anyway and there's nothing anyone can do about it" and "Get me to the doctor asap!" in people's minds -- especially if it is known that early treatment dramatically increases the odds of survival.

Re: Ebola Is Now Curable

#59

Post by gus_massa »

pvaldes wrote: post #40
Medicalidiot wrote: post #12

I want to know how long it will take for Ebola to evolve a resistance to this therapy.

> I want to know how long it will take for Ebola to evolve a resistance to this therapy. Maybe never. A lot of time in any case, probably. Ebola is a plant's virus adapted to trees. Evolved to use bats (and probably arboreal snakes also) but can't survive for a long time in primates, and can't survive in soil at long term. We are a dead end for it. Would need infected humans munching some inedible leaves of a tropica…

> Ebola is a plant's virus adapted to trees.

I never heard that and I can't find that in Wikipedia. Do you have a link with more information about that?

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