Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Hydroxychloroquine Probably Isn’t the Answer

acsh.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

101–110 of 115 posts

Re: Hydroxychloroquine Probably Isn’t the Answer

#101

Post by pbreit »

justin66 wrote: post #83
miked85 wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

> A fair amount of doctors tend to believe it is promising There are a couple of red flags about that article. No peer-reviewed (or otherwise) papers are mentioned and no clinical trials are discussed. The article does not even attempt to evaluate the truth of whether it's an effective therapy. Even judged on its own terms, the article is a weak. After looking at that survey they're flogging, it'd be pretty interesti…

Her are 20 more: https://twitter.com/__ice9/status/1246549028382408706

Re: Hydroxychloroquine Probably Isn’t the Answer

#102

Post by Fjolsvith »

gus_massa wrote: post #90
Fjolsvith wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately, you cannot correct nasty side effects for patients who die from lack of treatment.

Note that some cancers kill you very fast and other kill you in a very long time, so you have a chance of die from another cause. If the study in a small group proves that the miracle drug is ineffective and moreover it reduces the life expectancy to 1/2, then by not giving it to everyone avoid the nasty effect of reducing the life expectancy of a lot of people. Take a look at some "miracle" cures of cancer of the pa…

Of course, this would apply especially to a drug that hasn't been in regular use for 60 plus years.

Side effects of HCQ are well known, and safe dosage has long been established. If it saves some lives, why deny it to patients knocking on death's door?

Re: Hydroxychloroquine Probably Isn’t the Answer

#103

Post by 3fe9a03ccd14ca5 »

logicbombr wrote: post #86
Terretta wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Doctors and clinicians on front lines in NYC and greater NYC area say it's not helping at all, that they've by and large given up on using it. So I could reply that right now I choose to believe these MDs and ARNPs on front lines rather than commenters on HN. But that's not helpful compared to research. This one is a mess, and the tiny sampling of articles we have are not definitive. // Disclaimer: Lived in Africa fo…

Cuomo just said he is confident about hidroxychloroquine as NYC may see a plateau soon

This is the confusing thing about hidroxychloroquine right now. Two people looking at the same data, one saying it’s helping and one saying it’s doing nothing.

Re: Hydroxychloroquine Probably Isn’t the Answer

#104

Post by Fjolsvith »

gus_massa wrote: post #89
Dylan16807 wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So you have a cancer that normally has a 90% fatality rate after a year. Someone gives you evidence that they gave this drug to everyone with this cancer in their hospital, and 70/73 survived for a year. Not properly randomized, not properly controlled. Would you really reject their data and find it unconvincing?

If the results are so good it would be impressive. But it will be necessary to take a look at the data. Dollar to doughnuts they have a horrible methodological mistake, like a bad classification of the patients, or using a weird definition of cure [1], or cherrypicking the patients that get cured. [1] We have a big announcement of a miracle cure in Argentina in 1986. It was crotoxina [links bellow] that is a part of…

In this case, it is a bit easier to deduce a successful result, in that the patient survives death versus having a tumor shrink in size.

Re: Hydroxychloroquine Probably Isn’t the Answer

#105

Post by foota »

mjul wrote: post #29
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?

The Danish Serum Institute runs a “sentinel” testing programme for the common flu, and they note in their report about covid-19 last week (available in Danish) that the common flu has mostly been eliminated since the social distancing and lockdown measure were implemented. They interpret this a leading indicator for the reduction in covid-19 since it has a similar transmission mechanism.

Would be amazing if we managed to eliminate the common flu as a side effect of this :) not likely, but it does seem possible?

Re: Hydroxychloroquine Probably Isn’t the Answer

#106

Post by gus_massa »

Dylan16807 wrote: post #94
gus_massa wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the results are so good it would be impressive. But it will be necessary to take a look at the data. Dollar to doughnuts they have a horrible methodological mistake, like a bad classification of the patients, or using a weird definition of cure [1], or cherrypicking the patients that get cured. [1] We have a big announcement of a miracle cure in Argentina in 1986. It was crotoxina [links bellow] that is a part of…

Valid issues, but you can have all of those problems in a randomized controlled trial too. That's not a very compelling argument that the non-random poorly-controlled version is any worse in this hypothetical.

For example if the "usual" death rate is 90% and you select some group of patients for security reasons, like 18<=age<=60, perhaps the death rate is reduced to 80%. If the testing and control group is randomized, then if there is no effect of the drug you will get the same 80% in both groups. If the group is not randomized, you can't be sure that any of the selection criteria is the cause of the improvement.

Re: Hydroxychloroquine Probably Isn’t the Answer

#107

Post by h_r »

Dylan16807 wrote: post #93
h_r wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Again, this is the very thing that needs to be shown. You're simply repeating the same mistake. The post I was responding to really had no _point_, per se. It merely asserted that it's ridiculous to require such experiments because... miracle drug !

> Again, this is the very thing that needs to be shown. You're simply repeating the same mistake. "This" being the idea that "compelling evidence" and "evidence from randomized controlled trials" are not the same thing? That has been shown. The cliche example is parachutes. We have compelling evidence that they save lives, even though nobody has ever done a proper trial. Experiments don't have to be perfect to provid…

I hardly know where to start with this. Parachutes are not a cliche example of anything other than engineered products that are the result of well understood principles of physics, knowledge which was hardly arrived at by magical intuition. And medicine lags far far behind in the maturity of the science (my understanding as a layman).

And your final example of showing up in scientifically illiterate society wielding a miracle drug and declaring that they need no evidence of its efficacy, ignoring the fact that such evidence was all on you prior to arriving there? Sorry, I don't see how this is productive.

Re: Hydroxychloroquine Probably Isn’t the Answer

#108

Post by jojo2000 »

cma wrote: post #92
jojo2000 wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

1% is about expected at that point, since there is a 14 day lag on average and CFR can only go up over time after new cases trail off, it should end up higher. Look how South Korea eventually rose from .7% to 1.8% (somewhat biased by lots of young people infected early, but most of the rise at least from 1% to 1.8% was just due to the lags involved). Maybe it is still a good number for their population age demographi…

It's a narrow viewpoint to only see it through the lens of death percentage.

Of course it is a game-changer.

You eradicate the viral load after 6 days instead of 20+. Meaning :

- reduced contagion (avoiding big peak of infections), no confinement needed, so the better for the economy - you avoid complications, meaning less load on hospital, so you can save a lot of people who would have died otherwise. - people get better in less time so less damage to their finances.

Re: Hydroxychloroquine Probably Isn’t the Answer

#109

Post by obituary_latte »

foota wrote: post #105
mjul wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Danish Serum Institute runs a “sentinel” testing programme for the common flu, and they note in their report about covid-19 last week (available in Danish) that the common flu has mostly been eliminated since the social distancing and lockdown measure were implemented. They interpret this a leading indicator for the reduction in covid-19 since it has a similar transmission mechanism.

Would be amazing if we managed to eliminate the common flu as a side effect of this :) not likely, but it does seem possible?

There’s an interesting docuseries on Netflix that is partially about a team that is working on a permanent 1-shot flu vaccine: https://www.netflix.com/title/81026143

Re: Hydroxychloroquine Probably Isn’t the Answer

#110

Post by cma »

jojo2000 wrote: post #108
cma wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1% is about expected at that point, since there is a 14 day lag on average and CFR can only go up over time after new cases trail off, it should end up higher. Look how South Korea eventually rose from .7% to 1.8% (somewhat biased by lots of young people infected early, but most of the rise at least from 1% to 1.8% was just due to the lags involved). Maybe it is still a good number for their population age demographi…

It's a narrow viewpoint to only see it through the lens of death percentage. Of course it is a game-changer. You eradicate the viral load after 6 days instead of 20+. Meaning : - reduced contagion (avoiding big peak of infections), no confinement needed, so the better for the economy - you avoid complications, meaning less load on hospital, so you can save a lot of people who would have died otherwise. - people get b…

> You eradicate the viral load after 6 days instead of 20+. Meaning

There would be many less deaths if so.

Post reply on HN