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Study: No evidence of efficacy of hydroxychloroquine in hospitalized patients

medrxiv.org

281–290 of 379 posts

Re: Study: No evidence of efficacy of hydroxychloroquine in hospitalized patients

#281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's say Trump instead proposed that people taking, I don't know, silver supplements was a proper treatment for covid-19. Would you say it's irrational to oppose that idea? I mean it's not been proven to not work, so you gotta try anything you can, right? And he's giving people hope.

If a lot of scientists world-wide were looking at it, yes, I would think that irrational to not consider silver supplements. As far as I know, Trump has never advocated taking any drug without medical guidance. We were (and largely still are) dealing with a lot of unknowns. As far as I'm concerned, everything is on the table, as a possible improvement.

Isn't one of his quotes "It's been out there for a long time. What do you have to lose?" though I guess he does followup by saying he will talk to his doctor before he takes it. But the overall sentiment makes me pretty uncomfortable.

Re: Study: No evidence of efficacy of hydroxychloroquine in hospitalized patients

#282

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's "irrational" to oppose an idea just because it comes from someone you despise. It's not like this is coming from the National Enquirer --he has access to some of the brightest minds in the world. The efficacy picture on these drugs is quite confusing, and it's not out of the question that they will turn out to be crucially useful. Giving up on them without further investigation doesn't seem wise at this point. B…

"It's not like this is coming from the National Enquirer" It could be! I mean, his ideas presumably don't come from taking a random issue of the National Enquirer at face value, but he has or had a widely reported close relationship with the publisher, so it seems entirely plausible he might have been influenced by, say, David Pecker's opinions.

I'm dubious, but who knows? If the scientists and doctors think it looks promising, I don't much care who suggested it.

Trump isn't much to watch, but he does end up being right on some of his wacky-sounding calls more than I would have thought. I wouldn't bet my money against him.

Re: Study: No evidence of efficacy of hydroxychloroquine in hospitalized patients

#283
post #41

When 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…

My understanding is that fish tank chloroquine phosphate is the exact same molecule as the pharmaceutical. You shouldn’t take it because it doesn’t have pharmaceutical quality standards and is very tricky to dose.

There was a news item about someone who took it and was seriously poisoned. People predictably blamed the President.

Re: Study: No evidence of efficacy of hydroxychloroquine in hospitalized patients

#284
post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm out of the loop here: why would any political faction not want an alleged cure to work? What's the goal here?

President Trump encouraged trying hydroxycloroquine early on when there were early indications it might work. The problem is that he is considered such a villain by the left that they want it not to work just to prove him wrong. Such is the state of politics in the US. IMHO he was right to lean on the FDA to find out if its effective. Since it's already available, it would make sense for doctors to try it, but most a…

You do realize that, yes, "most [doctors] are not trained in doing controlled trials" because they have another job, the job of being a doctor? Running large RCTs takes time and a different sort of education.

Source: married to a physician who usually has a 1,200 patient panel, with a diversity of conditions; said physician spouse was at one point recruited to run an RCT for a drug company and did a lot of work to prepare and then pulled out because spouse figured out they'd not be allowed the latitude to improve the study design, and felt that the study design was slanted inappropriately to supporting the efficacy of the drug (it was not being compared to standard of care but instead to a demonstrably inferior treatment, a previous standard of care).

Yeah, objectivity and politics don't mix. There are people who do RCTs and do them well, and they're not just random doctors kind of scattering drugs among their patient panel.

Re: Study: No evidence of efficacy of hydroxychloroquine in hospitalized patients

#285
post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Trumps history of exaggeration goes before and anyone sane accounts for it.

It’s almost funny that the best that Trump supporters can come up with these days is “but everyone knows he has no clue and lies a lot”.

It's like they think we don't remember hearing about how he was the only honest, incorruptible candidate in the field because he was self-funded and "said what he thought," rather than "talking like a politician." Or how his competence as a businessman and hard-as-nails negotiator was worth more than any amount of political expertise.

We don't even hear about four-dimensional chess or "draining the swamp" anymore.

Re: Study: No evidence of efficacy of hydroxychloroquine in hospitalized patients

#286
post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm out of the loop here: why would any political faction not want an alleged cure to work? What's the goal here?

Trump pushed it as a miracle cure, at least at one point, and he evokes bitter opposition in many. (I think this is quite irrational, but that's your answer.)

I generally try hard to stay out of politics and to intentionally not get caught up in the Trump bashing that is quite common in my Twitter feed.

I'm having a really hard time trying to abide by that rule in this case.

I will suggest that you may have cause and effect backwards in at least some cases. Some people may be bitterly opposed to him because of nonsense like this rather than thinking this is nonsense because they bitterly oppose him.

Re: Study: No evidence of efficacy of hydroxychloroquine in hospitalized patients

#287

Personally I'm witholding judgment until the results of the PATCH trial ( https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT04329923 ) arrive, as it'll finally give us some decent statistical power, and be a full, double-blind RCT. It also has multiple study arms (health-care worker prophylaxis, home-quarantined early stage, hospitalized later-stage), so if it turns out that HCQ is effective but that by the time patients are ho…

Are any large(r) scale trials incorporating Azithromycin as well? The "most promising" study I saw early on was this one: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7102549/ - which seemed to suggest that the combo eliminated the viral load in 3-5 days. The only followup study I've found was this one: https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.04.08.20054551v... - that urged caution with the combo because of a po…

Other antibiotics than azithromycin have been used, e.g., doxycycline. The antibiotic's purpose is to halt opportunistic bacterial infection; many antibiotics are available to do that.

Re: Study: No evidence of efficacy of hydroxychloroquine in hospitalized patients

#288
post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Noone endorsed an unproven drug.

https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/12413672399007785... HYDROXYCHLOROQUINE & AZITHROMYCIN, taken together, have a real chance to be one of the biggest game changers in the history of medicine. The FDA has moved mountains - Thank You! Hopefully they will BOTH (H works better with A, International Journal of Antimicrobial Agents).........be put in use IMMEDIATELY. PEOPLE ARE DYING, MOVE FAST, and GOD BLESS EVER…

For a comparison (to the original point made above):

Joe Biden has a real chance to be one of the biggest game changers in the history of this country. The Democratic party has moved mountains in their support of them - Thank You! Hopefully he will take office IMMEDIATELY. PEOPLE ARE LOSING FAITH, MOVE FAST, and GOD BLESS EVERYONE! @US_DNC @JoeBidenPrez @POTUS @IowaElections

Re: Study: No evidence of efficacy of hydroxychloroquine in hospitalized patients

#289

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nobody’s saying Gilead can’t make a profit. Just that they can’t make an obscene (“have us over a barrel”) profit.

The post I was responding to had the strong implication of a Mafiosi stopping by a store and saying "Nice store you have here - it would be a shame if something happened to it". "You might want to consider our needs and sell us stuff at what we consider a good price".

My comment was specifically in regards to extortion, and you'd need the court of public opinion on your side to do it anyways. The US government still does use eminent domain to do stuff people don't want - see recent examples involving the Keystone XL pipeline and the border fence where everyone from native american tribesfolk to ranchers have had their property seized by the government against their wishes.

Re: Study: No evidence of efficacy of hydroxychloroquine in hospitalized patients

#290

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Trump pushed it as a miracle cure, at least at one point, and he evokes bitter opposition in many. (I think this is quite irrational, but that's your answer.)

I generally try hard to stay out of politics and to intentionally not get caught up in the Trump bashing that is quite common in my Twitter feed. I'm having a really hard time trying to abide by that rule in this case. I will suggest that you may have cause and effect backwards in at least some cases. Some people may be bitterly opposed to him because of nonsense like this rather than thinking this is nonsense becaus…

No doubt it's some of each. Difficult to imagine anyone having a strong opinion on some random drug if he wasn't involved, though.
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