A study out of thin air • Hacker News Board

Re: A study out of thin air

#21

Post by Fjolsvith » Fri, Jun 05, 2020, 12:39 PM UTC

seesawtron wrote: post #13

beaner wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the article does not provide any further information that the Surgisphere study was the source of the WHO decision Genuine question: What else is it assumed WHO may have made the decision based on?

When such a large study is published in a big Journal, claiming that a drug might have a negative impact on lives of people in the trials, the authorities will be considered stupid not to pay attention to it at all and continue the trials. That is exactly what they did: They paused their trials temporarily to look at the evidence of this study, examined it and found that it was indeed controversial and lacked solid d…

> they do not care about the effects it has on the public in the long term by reducing faith in world health organizations.

Or even the direct effects on the public in terms of healthcare.

Re: A study out of thin air

#22

Post by Fjolsvith » Fri, Jun 05, 2020, 12:48 PM UTC

sampo wrote: post #16

thaumaturgy wrote: post #14

This site's front page has got a lot of red flags on it. There's another treatment of this over on sciencemag: https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/06/mysterious-company-s... This would be a pretty serious black eye for both The Lancet and the WHO, which has already been under scrutiny from multiple countries. However, it's worth pointing out that this wasn't the only study on HCQ. There have been others: https://www…

Lots of hydroxychloroquine studies or preprints have been published, and they mostly observe that the effect is close to zero (in good or in bad), either because there is no effect, or the study size was too small to detect other than large effects. But this now infamous study was the only one to suggest a clear and large negative effect.

So, if hydroxychloroquine is not effective, what explains an extremely low COVID death rate such as what Bangladesh (a country with endemic Malaria [1]) has?

Bangladesh population: 161 million [2]

Bangladesh COVID deaths: 811 [3]

Bangladesh COVID death rate: 811/161m = 0.000503%

1. https://www.thelancet.com/journals/langlo/article/PIIS2214-1....

2. https://www.google.com/search?q=bangladesh+population&rlz=1C...

3. https://www.google.com/search?q=bangladesh+number+of+covid+d...

Re: A study out of thin air

#23

Post by perl4ever » Sat, Jun 06, 2020, 5:35 AM UTC

Fjolsvith wrote: post #22

sampo wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lots of hydroxychloroquine studies or preprints have been published, and they mostly observe that the effect is close to zero (in good or in bad), either because there is no effect, or the study size was too small to detect other than large effects. But this now infamous study was the only one to suggest a clear and large negative effect.

So, if hydroxychloroquine is not effective, what explains an extremely low COVID death rate such as what Bangladesh (a country with endemic Malaria [1]) has? Bangladesh population: 161 million [2] Bangladesh COVID deaths: 811 [3] Bangladesh COVID death rate: 811/161m = 0.000503% 1. https://www.thelancet.com/journals/langlo/article/PIIS2214-1... . 2. https://www.google.com/search?q=bangladesh+population&rlz=1C... 3. h…

It really worries me how people are aggressively framing the pandemic as something in the past, and using talking points that are based on a month or two ago. It's necessary to pay attention to what's been happening in May and June.

Bangladesh indeed has a much lower case and death rate so far than the hardest hit countries. But the number of daily new cases is rapidly increasing and in fact is now within the top 10 countries in the whole world. Total cases are increasing 5% a day, which is among the highest growth rates.