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Hydroxychloroquine Probably Isn’t the Answer

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Re: Hydroxychloroquine Probably Isn’t the Answer

#71

Post by pbhjpbhj »

gonational wrote: post #19

Has anyone noticed that the CDC’s reported deaths by week from ordinary flu and pneumonia have been plummeting while COVID-19 death rise? They are down from the normal 4.5k+ per week during this period to around 2.3k per week and they are falling parabolically as COVID-19 expands. What could cause this?

Isolation (physical distancing) would cause this. Flu doesn't have a long incubation, and doesn't survive as well (AFAICT, not a medic) outside bodies.

Isolation should reduce all virus transmission and so reduce incidence of flu, etc.. We'll need 3 weeks minimum of isolation to reduce Covid19 transmissions, assuming everyone is actually doing it.

In the UK (just England I think, might be England & Wales) our Office of National Statistics says there were https://bit.ly/39DZPCo) in the most recent year of records (2017; from c.60M population).

Re: Hydroxychloroquine Probably Isn’t the Answer

#72

Post by erichocean »

pbreit wrote: post #69
stri8ed wrote: post #16

Not to diminish the possible successes, but without a randomized control trial, there is no way the success can reliably be attributed to the medications. That's not to say they should stop prescribing it, simply due to lack of formal trials. But the perceived benefits should not be taken at face value, yet.

Why is medecine the only subject that requires such a thing?

It's an anti-engineering bias.

In the real world, science comes after engineering has succeeded to explain why (and ideally, how) something the engineers are doing successfully actually works.

To validate the "science", you then test what the scientists came up with by taking their "why/how" explanation and doing some new engineering based on it. If the new engineering also works, the science is solid. If it fails, the science is wrong. In both cases though: the original approach is still successful for the engineers.

I wish we had an "I Fucking Love Engineering" crowd. Would solve a lot of problems with how people think about the world, and the advancement of knowledge in general.

Re: Hydroxychloroquine Probably Isn’t the Answer

#73

Post by hamilyon2 »

gonational wrote: post #19

Has anyone noticed that the CDC’s reported deaths by week from ordinary flu and pneumonia have been plummeting while COVID-19 death rise? They are down from the normal 4.5k+ per week during this period to around 2.3k per week and they are falling parabolically as COVID-19 expands. What could cause this?

Washing hands

Re: Hydroxychloroquine Probably Isn’t the Answer

#74

Post by jojo2000 »

cma wrote: post #57
ucha wrote: post #45

This morning we had: France ex-IHU Marseille/AP-HP: 79160 cases, 7527 dead, mortality rate 9.5% IHU Marseille/AP-HP: 3005 cases, 33 dead, mortality rate 1.1% France doesn't use HCQ consistently yet. Didier Raoult who heads the IHU in Marseille has been using it systematically on all cases, even mild ones for more than 2 weeks. I doubt such a difference in mortality rate could be explained by a difference in number of…

Does Marseille test more than France? It is expected no one is hitting a 9.5% death rate unless they quit testing almost all but the severe or dead.

It's the most heavily tested area of the world [0], and also the only place where everyone who is positive gets a treatment (hydroxychloroquine + azithromycine). Other protocols are listed here [1]

Regarding status, it seems the peak is being reached there [2]

[0] https://twitter.com/raoult_didier/status/1245978149206228992...

[1] https://twitter.com/raoult_didier/status/1242808646997880832...

[1] https://twitter.com/raoult_didier/status/1246003916325748736...

Re: Hydroxychloroquine Probably Isn’t the Answer

#75

Post by xtof »

pbreit wrote: post #70
jacquesm wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"If there was any effect of this drug on COVID-19, it was minimal. Hydroxychloroquine, whose toxicity is far lower, may be safer than chloroquine. But that doesn't matter if the drugs are ineffective." What's political about that? The whole idea that if there were a simple and cheap cure that it would be politicized to the point where it won't see widespread application is ridiculous.

It's very clear that the resistance to these drugs is an intense case of Trump Derangement Syndrome. There's an almost perfect correlation between reaction to these drugs and Trump support.

It's resistance to people who are clearly out of their lane. He is not a medical doctor, yet he's recommending people take it. It's unremarkable that he's incompetent to give this advice, because most people are incompetent to give such advice. I am incompetent to give such advice. What is remarkable is he clearly thinks he's competent to give such advice, and that it's appropriate for him to give it without any qualification whatsoever. https://mobile.twitter.com/atrupar/status/124655621931107942...

Re: Hydroxychloroquine Probably Isn’t the Answer

#76

Post by jojo2000 »

snapetom wrote: post #50

“ There is absolutely no evidence that HCQ or HCQ/azithromycin would have any effect on seriously ill patients with viral pneumonia.” Correct. that’s against the thought right now. HCQ is great at preventing patients from getting to the serious pneumonia stage. Once they’re on a vent, they should be on another cocktail.

Yes, once they're on a vent, your main problem is not even the viral load, but rather that the body reacts to the infection in desperate ways like cytokine storm [0] which destroys organs.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cytokine_release_syndrome

Re: Hydroxychloroquine Probably Isn’t the Answer

#77

Post by miked85 »

xtof wrote: post #75
pbreit wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's very clear that the resistance to these drugs is an intense case of Trump Derangement Syndrome. There's an almost perfect correlation between reaction to these drugs and Trump support.

It's resistance to people who are clearly out of their lane. He is not a medical doctor, yet he's recommending people take it. It's unremarkable that he's incompetent to give this advice, because most people are incompetent to give such advice. I am incompetent to give such advice. What is remarkable is he clearly thinks he's competent to give such advice, and that it's appropriate for him to give it without any qual…

A fair amount of doctors tend to believe it is promising [1]. If I was in the hospital, of course I would want to take it regardless of how anecdotal the evidence is.

[1] https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2020/apr/2/hydroxychlor...

Re: Hydroxychloroquine Probably Isn’t the Answer

#78

Post by ucha »

rrss wrote: post #66
ucha wrote: post #45

This morning we had: France ex-IHU Marseille/AP-HP: 79160 cases, 7527 dead, mortality rate 9.5% IHU Marseille/AP-HP: 3005 cases, 33 dead, mortality rate 1.1% France doesn't use HCQ consistently yet. Didier Raoult who heads the IHU in Marseille has been using it systematically on all cases, even mild ones for more than 2 weeks. I doubt such a difference in mortality rate could be explained by a difference in number of…

Seems like those statistics would be pretty easily explained by Marseille being a week or two behind other areas in France on the epidemic curve. Pennsylvania: 11510 cases, 150 deaths, mortality rate 1.3% Is Pennsylvania also using HCQ systematically on all cases? I don't think these crude CFRs are useful.

That's the most interesting rebuttal I've heard but I don't think it's true. Everything else being equal, you could estimate the stage of the epidemic by the number of cases per capita. The Marseille department, Bouches-du-Rhône, has 3% of the French population and about 4% of cases.

Also, in your example, the crude CFR for the US is 2.9% right now, so only 2.2x that of Pennsylvania. We're talking about 8+ here.

Re: Hydroxychloroquine Probably Isn’t the Answer

#79

Post by wolco »

hexl wrote: post #27
stri8ed wrote: post #16

Not to diminish the possible successes, but without a randomized control trial, there is no way the success can reliably be attributed to the medications. That's not to say they should stop prescribing it, simply due to lack of formal trials. But the perceived benefits should not be taken at face value, yet.

> but without a randomized control trial, there is no way the success can reliably be attributed to the medications That's non-sense, if everyone that had cancer got cured by a miracle drug, would you still demand a randomized control trial?

Yes because some also explode after treatmenr. Side effects can be serious.

Re: Hydroxychloroquine Probably Isn’t the Answer

#80

Post by downerending »

nradov wrote: post #31

Why is this flagged? It seems like an interesting article from a reputable source.

I'm guessing it's because the organization has been praised by a number of well-known people on the right (e.g., Steve Forbes, Ben Carson).

And because the question of whether or not this drug works, or even should be used at all, seems to have become highly politicized. I think I read that at least one US governor threatened to pull the medical license of any doctor that used it.

I don't have any idea whether this drug might be useful, but I think our most boring, apolitical scientists should be making that call. It could well end up that it sort of works, some of the time, perhaps in combination with other drugs or factors. Conceivably this will be solved the way AIDS ultimately was, slowly zeroing in on a set of treatments that mostly work.

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