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Hydroxychloroquine Update for April 6

blogs.sciencemag.org

61–70 of 99 posts

Re: Hydroxychloroquine Update for April 6

#61
post #50
post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Opting to listen to Navarro over Fauci is a very odd choice. Look, I get that certain discussions on this damn site resist dragging politics into it all, but this is pretty important: Navarro has nowhere near the qualifications that Fauci does and there is no reason to listen to him on this. You're contributing to a larger problem with misinformation at a time when it's not needed. Listen to the medical professional,…

I think he's just relying on Navarro's reporting that HCQ is being used in NYC, which, it clearly is; it looks like it's being tried all over the place. You can probably safely quote administration officials on something that simple. If he quoted Navarro saying HCQ was working , that would be problematic, especially because it doesn't seem to be working.

I don't interpret the comment that way, but more power to you if you do.

Going on to note these places where it supposedly work(s|ed) is indirectly bolstering Navarro's status in a discussion where he shouldn't be involved, and more or less implying that it does work when it clearly isn't working as described.

Re: Hydroxychloroquine Update for April 6

#62

Why are we talking about drugs in the public media? This is like people demanding certain drugs from their doctors because they saw it in pharmaceutical commercial.

Because it's actively being pushed by right-wing media and the President. We have a Presidential election in November. And there is a proven, strong correlation between the strength of the economy and your chance of being elected. You can't have a strong economy and people feeling happy when they are stuck at home without a job and fearful of leaving the house. So they need to get people back to work. And the only wa…

Facts. Sad, depressing facts.

Re: Hydroxychloroquine Update for April 6

#63
post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a clinical trial going on to check for just that. The hope is that when taken as a prophylactic it prevents entry into cells and give the immune system an advantage over the pathogen, but as you say, the immunosuppressive effects are a concern. We'll see soon enough.

Repeating myself, but: there's an extent to which that trial has already been running naturally, since lots and lots of people take doses of HCQ comparable to the C19 protocol already, for rheumatoid arthritis. Lots of those people are getting C19. Are you seeing reports that arthritic patients who get C19 are faring better?

Are you seeing reports of the opposite?

Re: Hydroxychloroquine Update for April 6

#64
post #25
post #17

My completely anecdotal experience with the Hydroxychloroquine story is that researchers keep pooh-poohing it and people in the field keep having success with it. All I know is that based on the aggregate of information I've seen thus far, if I come down with Coronavirus, I want to be prescribed that stuff.

Regression to the mean is a huge problem with anecdotes. Some people get better. It may be due to some treatment, or they may just get better. This is why we have structured studies.

Yeah, I guarantee you that even with a 10% fatality rate 90% of people will get better spontaneously on their own. So any prospective treatment would have to do better than the recovery rate without treatment.

This is really a situation where the phrase "the plural of anecdote is not statistics."

Re: Hydroxychloroquine Update for April 6

#65
post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It’s a well-understood drug For treating the issues it was designed for. Not for treating COVID-19.

You could technically say that about Tylenol, but I doubt there’d be anyone jumping up and down about how dangerous it would be for a Covid 19 patient to take 500mg of it daily as part of a treatment regimen. There’s literally NO drugs approved specifically for Covid 19, but there are drugs, like HCQ, which are promising and well-understood in general.

Tylenol is an odd choice of example here given that it poses a risk of liver damage and for some subsets of the population it's actively dangerous to take it. We literally lace some drugs with Tylenol to make them "abuse-deterrent" because we know taking too much of it would harm you.

Re: Hydroxychloroquine Update for April 6

#66
post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It’s a well-understood drug For treating the issues it was designed for. Not for treating COVID-19.

You could technically say that about Tylenol, but I doubt there’d be anyone jumping up and down about how dangerous it would be for a Covid 19 patient to take 500mg of it daily as part of a treatment regimen. There’s literally NO drugs approved specifically for Covid 19, but there are drugs, like HCQ, which are promising and well-understood in general.

We treat COVID-19-like illnesses with Tylenol all the time. We do not use HCQ in the same way.

Re: Hydroxychloroquine Update for April 6

#67
post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a clinical trial going on to check for just that. The hope is that when taken as a prophylactic it prevents entry into cells and give the immune system an advantage over the pathogen, but as you say, the immunosuppressive effects are a concern. We'll see soon enough.

Repeating myself, but: there's an extent to which that trial has already been running naturally, since lots and lots of people take doses of HCQ comparable to the C19 protocol already, for rheumatoid arthritis. Lots of those people are getting C19. Are you seeing reports that arthritic patients who get C19 are faring better?

I have not seen any co-occurence statistics. As both lupus and rheumatoid arthritis are at about 1% (each), and many of them are taking HCQ, then if HCQ works[0] I would expect much fewer of them to be diagnosed with SARS-Cov-2 in the first place. This is something that the CDC _should_ be able to track, and doesn't even require any ethically questionable trials.

[0] and somehow the Lupus/RA mechanics are not influencing disease progress, which is not a trivial assumption, but does not disqualify the thought experiment entirely.

Re: Hydroxychloroquine Update for April 6

#68
post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a clinical trial going on to check for just that. The hope is that when taken as a prophylactic it prevents entry into cells and give the immune system an advantage over the pathogen, but as you say, the immunosuppressive effects are a concern. We'll see soon enough.

Repeating myself, but: there's an extent to which that trial has already been running naturally, since lots and lots of people take doses of HCQ comparable to the C19 protocol already, for rheumatoid arthritis. Lots of those people are getting C19. Are you seeing reports that arthritic patients who get C19 are faring better?

People with rheumatoid arthritis are not a good population to study. We know that certain comorbidities increase death rate. Now you have people with immune system problems taking an immunosuppressive drug. The outcome tells you nothing.

Re: Hydroxychloroquine Update for April 6

#69
post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Repeating myself, but: there's an extent to which that trial has already been running naturally, since lots and lots of people take doses of HCQ comparable to the C19 protocol already, for rheumatoid arthritis. Lots of those people are getting C19. Are you seeing reports that arthritic patients who get C19 are faring better?

People with rheumatoid arthritis are not a good population to study. We know that certain comorbidities increase death rate. Now you have people with immune system problems taking an immunosuppressive drug. The outcome tells you nothing.

Jeremy Faust does not agree with you.

https://twitter.com/jeremyfaust/status/1246801663345618944

But it's still being given, so I'm certain there are other doctors still holding out hope.

Re: Hydroxychloroquine Update for April 6

#70
Various doctors have been using chloroquine with high dose zinc. One idea is that chloroquine is simply a zinc ionophore, and its other effects aren't so relevant. Zinc has a long history of being recognized as an important nutrient for the immune system.

https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal...

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