Live data from Hacker News

Chloroquine, past and present

blogs.sciencemag.org

291–300 of 320 posts

Re: Chloroquine, past and present

#291
post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What? There was more than enough evidence. They are the ones anti-science.

Not knowing the evidence doesn't make someone unscientific. Most scientists don't know most evidence. If he had the evidence explained to him and then just assumed it would be different in France that would be unscientific, but we'd all need to read French to ague about that.

In February the situation in China was public knowledge.

It's difficult to understand why a country would go on lockdown and build emergency hospitals for something nor worse than seasonal flu...

Re: Chloroquine, past and present

#292
post #287
post #283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it is likely we'll have an available and effective drug for treating it I don't believe this is likely at all. At best we will have something that kinda sorta works in some patients. If this was likely we'd have a drug for the common flu long time ago. To remind you, the flu takes about 50K lives in the US every year.

There are effective drugs for common flu strains; including a set of vaccines. And if the US manages to get COVID-19 related deaths down to 50k lives for 2020 that will be pretty peachy.

There won't be a vaccine this year. That's pretty clear. Vaccines take a long time to get tested under the best of circumstances. If not tested properly and administered to millions of people (which they'd have to be in order to have effect) they could cause a lot of adverse reactions and deaths all on their own. Don't take this as antivax bullshit: I do take a flu vaccine every year myself, including this year, my kid is fully vaccinated also (+ flu vaccine last year - I told him to "be a man"). It's just the nature of the beast - immune system can really fuck one up once it really gets going.

Re: Chloroquine, past and present

#293
post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

right. we need to wait for FDA approval. and since it's prescription only, you need to check with your doctor.

Depending on the country, chloroquine (or hydroxychloroquine) are over the counter. At least it is in both the UK and India. The UK has banned export of it, and in India it's less prevalent than it used to be because of the spread of chloroquine-resistant malaria. It used to be used /extremely/ widely in places where malaria is a common occurrence.

UK is prescription only. Just checked on couple of online pharmacies.

Re: Chloroquine, past and present

#294
post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would love to know where in the UK chloroquine is behind-the-counter and not prescription only.

Chloroquine is class P (pharmacy medicines), which is effectively "behind-the-counter but the pharmacist tells you how to use it". The idea being that if you want to take a trip to somewhere tropical, you don't have to tie up a GP with a standard, low-risk medication, but it's not quite so low-risk that you just put it on the shelf. Behind-the-counter, if you will. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Over-the-counter_drug#…

I’ve been trying to buy some since early January and haven’t found a single pharmacist who will sell it to me. If you know of one, please let me know.

Re: Chloroquine, past and present

#295
post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Chloroquine is class P (pharmacy medicines), which is effectively "behind-the-counter but the pharmacist tells you how to use it". The idea being that if you want to take a trip to somewhere tropical, you don't have to tie up a GP with a standard, low-risk medication, but it's not quite so low-risk that you just put it on the shelf. Behind-the-counter, if you will. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Over-the-counter_drug#…

I’ve been trying to buy some since early January and haven’t found a single pharmacist who will sell it to me. If you know of one, please let me know.

No-one carries it because they'd have hydroxychloroquine instead. Hydroxychloroquine is prescription only.

You're not going to be able to get a registered professional to give you anything for off-label experimentation, especially not something with potentially serious side effects like chloroquine.

Re: Chloroquine, past and present

#296
post #289
post #276

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the problem is quite simple: the virus infects your body, damages your lungs, and fucks up your immune system. Then you get an opportunistic pneumonia The mechanism is also quite simple: administer them both together and the antimalarials kill the virus, the antibiotics kill the pneumonia.

you're not really an md, are you?

No. Now let's have a look at that bwain of yours.

Re: Chloroquine, past and present

#297

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How utterly and inconceivably selfish. How would that work out if everyone thought like that?

Is it really? I've heard there's some logic to this… If instead, we all stay home and quarantine, the second we start reducing the quarantine the virus flares back up again. If instead, we start acquiring immunity in low-risk populations, at a rate that the hospitals can sustain, we'll have a degree of herd immunity and a portion of the population that can no longer spread it. I'm certainly not an epidemiologist thou…

Delaying the pandemic buys time. Time is the most critically short resource.

Time means more ICUs, more ventilators. It means industrial capacity can shift from making consumer goods to medical supplies like masks. It means medical personnel get training and experience with the disease instead of shooting in the dark. It means labs and research teams can give more informed treatment advice.

It means small businesses and industries can try to reallocate resources and jobs and maybe save part of the economy. It means more time to educate the population to avoid high risk activities, wear masks, wash hands and so forth.

In every way it’s better if we delay the pandemic now that we know about it than if we just let it peak exponentially and kill the maximum number of people.

Re: Chloroquine, past and present

#298
post #165
post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would say the same thing regardless of the man on the podium. You're the one bringing partisanship into this. It's hype because nothing has been demonstrated yet using practices that have been worked out through a hundred years of painful trial and error. It's hype because he's saying he thinks it will work when he has no data to support that conclusion. It's hype because as the president must surely be aware, Amer…

> I would say the same thing regardless of the man on the podium. Must have been hard for you to stomach 2009 then when 60 million Americans got infected with H1N1, nothing whatsoever was done, and the CDC budget was cut the very next year.

We didn't have to stomach much.

https://www.propublica.org/article/no-president-trump-the-co...

Re: Chloroquine, past and present

#299
post #195
post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Supply is not an issue: https://www.fiercepharma.com/pharma/new-commitments-mylan-an... We need testing that the medical community will accept.

> Supply is not an issue Well, I was going to order some, been researching for a couple days before buying, and in that time all stock on my known pharmacy sites is now gone.

How does one find these sites? I've never been able to determine which are reputable

Re: Chloroquine, past and present

#300
post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pardon the dumb question, but has anyone just tried quinine? I've been wondering if a hefty gin and tonic would help matters.

I'm taking it, I've also got my family and neighbors on it. I was unable to convince doctors since February to take me seriously that hydroxychloroquine is likely to have prophylactic effects so I took matters into my own hands. I know what I'm doing. Those who don't know what they are doing should not just jump in since they need to manage and understand the dose, the drug interactions, and the side effects. None of…

How are you making the tonic?
Post reply on HN