And to put this interpretation into perspective, people that need this drug for diseases that it has proven to have a large effect on are losing access to it because it may or may not help with COVID-19.
Study: No evidence of efficacy of hydroxychloroquine in hospitalized patients
111–120 of 379 posts
Re: Study: No evidence of efficacy of hydroxychloroquine in hospitalized patients
#112Hey, if you don't want to take it, don't.
Simple as that.
Re: Study: No evidence of efficacy of hydroxychloroquine in hospitalized patients
#113It's important to interpret these results carefully: "no evidence of efficacy" does not imply evidence of no efficacy, and in fact the uncertainty in this study is quite large. The sample size is small enough that it would be very hard for this study to detect the effect of hydroxychloroquine unless that effect is very, very large. From the abstract: > In the HCQ group, 2.8% of the patients died within 7 days vs 4.6%…
This is a great comment thanks. Title of the paper could (with a tongue firmly in cheek) be called, "Weak evidence for effectiveness of hydroxychloroquine but our sample was likely too small for it to pass a T-test"
I agree. I wonder if we could try to move click-baity articles under truth in advertising legislation of some sort.
edit: clarified it a little
Re: Study: No evidence of efficacy of hydroxychloroquine in hospitalized patients
#114Earlier quoted context omitted.
Because HCQ’s efficacy was briefly endorsed by a controversial political figure I fear that there’s no evidence in either direction will convince the true believers. This is now a political issue, like global warming. Hopefully someone is ramping up production so availability improves for those that actually need it.
Imagine if Obama had "endorsed" Biden using the same language. Would you have considered it an endorsement? I find the interpretation of what he said to be very peculiar.
What is the comparison being made here? Endorsing the frontrunner for political candidacy isn't remotely the same as endorsing an unproven drug to treat an ongoing pandemic.
Re: Study: No evidence of efficacy of hydroxychloroquine in hospitalized patients
#115Earlier quoted context omitted.
Imagine if Obama had "endorsed" Biden using the same language. Would you have considered it an endorsement? I find the interpretation of what he said to be very peculiar.
I'm not at all sure I would like millions of doses of Joe Biden to be placed in the federal stockpile of emergency medical supplies, even if those doses were for the sole use of the federal government. It sounds kind of expensive and I don't think anyone knows what the effect of Joe on the coronavirus actually is.
They will do that with vaccines before they are approved as well as a preparatory step. They likely will do it with more than one vaccine formulation, even if only one is ultimately approved. Stockpiling isn't an endorsement.
Re: Study: No evidence of efficacy of hydroxychloroquine in hospitalized patients
#116When the Covid crisis is over, one of the strangest sub- plots will have been the fracas around Hydroxychloroquine. Starting from medical practitioners worldwide adopting its usage in a ‘cargo cult’ way, mimicking what other doctors were doing, to Raoult’s low- quality study. Then people in Silicon Valley (notably Elon Musk) picking up the idea. Followed by the explosion in the political sphere, from Trump pushing it…
Politically, yes, there was/is a cargo cult. Both for those convinced it's a cure, and the anti-cargo-cult opposing party convinced it's somewhere between useless and actively harmful. From a medical practice standpoint, you have a widely-available drug with well-known side effects that can be administered in a medical setting with low risk, and potential life-saving upside. When the research is early but potentially…
> anti-cargo-cult opposing party convinced it's somewhere between useless and actively harmful.
Can you name some prominent members of this cult and their statements that match this framing? Serious question. I don't think anyone really matches that description. Pretty much everyone horrified at the cloroquine boosterism was horrified because it was irresponsible and dangerous, not because they had strong feelings about the drug itself.
Re: Study: No evidence of efficacy of hydroxychloroquine in hospitalized patients
#117Earlier quoted context omitted.
Only if we chose to let them bend us over said barrel? The US government could simply seize the patent if Gilead acted in a manner against the public good.
And then what happens next time? Why spend all the time and effort, only to have what you did nationalized? Incentivizing people to not do productive things like develop drugs seems like a really bad idea.
I used to agree with you. Then I realized that drug companies spend more on lawyers than scientists.
Re: Study: No evidence of efficacy of hydroxychloroquine in hospitalized patients
#118Earlier quoted context omitted.
> between 7% and 28% of hospitalized have acute myocardial injury So, for a younger (< 60) otherwise healthy person whose chance of death with covid is less than 1%, it would seem ill advised to take this medication at the onset of symptoms, unless the the disease itself causes similar or higher rates of heart damage.
It's only advised if it actually works. If it doesn't work, then there's still no point in taking it because the side effects are still bad. And there's no good evidence that it even works, and some mild evidence that it doesn't.
Yes, and even if it did work to reduce severity of the illness (agreed that there is no evidence of this), it seems like for low-risk people, the risks of heart damage outweigh the benefits of taking it. After all, what's an extra week or two of illness vs a 7-28% chance of heart damage.
Re: Study: No evidence of efficacy of hydroxychloroquine in hospitalized patients
#119A useful compilation of information on HCQ and COVID-19:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1O6Cls-Oz2ZAgJuyDbnICEGjM...
Re: Study: No evidence of efficacy of hydroxychloroquine in hospitalized patients
#120I don’t understand who gets to decide and how, which of these people receive / don’t receive a specific treatment. I’ve always loved medical studies, but now the crisis got me to thinking about the moral decision (playing god?)
The answer is, by and large, doctors. Within the hospitals they really do have the power of life and death, deciding who gets treatment when supplies are thin. Generally the decisions are made using the heuristic of "With this limited stock of X, who should we give it to to save the maximum possible number and quality of lives?"
It's not playing god, it's just making rational decisions in times of scarcity. That's something humans do constantly, no god necessary.