Preprint. August 23, 2020.
Key Words: hydroxychloroquine, COVID-19, SARS-CoV-2, Wuhan
Abstract
Three population surveys were performed, seeking information about the drugs prescribed for COVID-19 patients. The August 16 national survey (USA-0816, 868 valid responses) and the August 3 national survey (USA-0803, 1,059 valid responses) covered the entire US. Another smaller survey (TX-0711, 116 valid responses) covered the state of Texas. All responses to all three surveys are attached in anonymized form for further analysis by the scientific community as one of the deliverables.
The analysis was focused on Hydroxychloroquine (HCQ). This study has found that Hydroxychloroquine (HCQ) was used for the treatment of COVID-19 in the US since January 2020. From January to August 16, 13.5% of COVID-19 patients ages 40+ were prescribed Hydroxychloroquine in the US.
The New England and Middle Atlantic census divisions suffered from the largest COVID-19 mortality and accounted for most COVID-19 deaths from mid-March through mid-June. This study has found that they had the lowest utilization of HCQ (average 6.1% for patients ages 40+) in the matching period early March — late May.
Everywhere in the US, prescribing HCQ nearly ceased in the last third of May but resumed in June and have been fluctuating around 16%, for patients ages 40+.
The author declares no competing interest.
No funding was provided for this work.
All relevant ethical guidelines have been followed.
Introduction
Hydroxychloroquine + Azithromycin (with or without Zinc), given upon early symptoms of COVID-19, have been reported to provide significant benefits in clinical trials 1 2, improving patients’ odds up to 5 times 3 3b 4 5. Since Hydroxychloroquine (HCQ) had no sponsor who would determine the best treatment regimen and conduct clinical trials accordingly, many treatment regimens were tried. Unfortunately, some meta-reviews commingled results from various regimens and included borderline fraudulent papers. That created confusion about the effectiveness of early HCQ-based treatment for COVID-19.
In some countries, HCQ-based treatment for COVID-19 became a de-facto standard6. At the same time, only a small number of relatively small randomized controlled trials were performed. Conducting further RCTs with endpoints in the patient’s health, length or strength of symptoms, hospitalization, or mortality is unethical and impractical.
Luckily, modern science is based on using real-world evidence, rather than on regurgitating prior literature. The gap between the clinical practice and academic world can be bridged by surveying physicians who treated COVID-19, and patients who received treatment from COVID-19. In one survey7, published on April 8, 60%-70% of physicians reported that they would take HCQ and give it to family members on symptoms of COVID-19. Sermo released regular doctor surveys regarding the drugs used for COVID-198. These surveys 9 10 11, now discontinued, have shown that doctors of the world used HCQ very broadly and rated it as being very effective or extremely effective against COVID-19. A systematic review of surveys of physicians12 was conducted by the author and confirmed these conclusions.
In academic meta-analyses of studies repurposing existing drugs for COVID-19, Hydroxychloroquine was not studied a lot13. A registry of self-reported use of medications by physicians14 is not very helpful. Surprisingly, statistics on COVID-19 patients treated with HCQ in the US are hard to find. The pharmacy’s data is not publicly available, shared insufficiently and selectively, and the shared information is more15 or less16 useful. Under the US FDA Emergency Use Authorization, the Strategic National Stockpile dispensed about 2.4 million HCQ 7-day treatment courses to state and local authorities from March 28 to May 22. Then the FDA claimed no knowledge of how these doses were used17.
This study collected data directly from the people who knew COVID-19 patients personally or otherwise, including information about the drugs prescribed, period, region, and the patient’s age. Limited analysis was performed, attempting to quantify the actual usage of HCQ. The word “patient” is used throughout the paper to stress that the surveys asked only about people who saw a doctor for COVID-19 symptoms.
Methods
Data Collection
All three surveys were conducted using SurveyMonkey. Each survey was sent to the general US population. Each survey asked the respondent the following:
- Whether he or she knew anybody diagnosed with or treated for COVID-19. Depending on the answer, the response was assigned weight from 1.0 (personal knowledge, friends, or family) to 0.2 (second-hand knowledge) or disqualified at all. Qualified respondents were asked to provide information about a single case best known to them.
- The age bracket of the patient was selected from the options <40, 40-49, 50-59, 60-69, 70+.
- When the treatment took place.
- Which of the following drugs were prescribed or recommended:
Hydroxychloroquine (Plaquenil)
Ibuprofen (Advil)
Acetaminophen (Paracetamol, Tylenol)
Remdesivir
Other
The order of the drugs was random, except for Other. The respondent was asked to select everything that applied. TX-0711 also included Azithromycin as an option. In the analysis, it was considered as any drug other than Hydroxychloroquine.
The geographical location of the respondent was provided by SurveyMonkey, at the resolution of census division (i.e., multiple states). It was assumed that the patient was in the same division. Also, TX-0711 was limited to Texas. USA-0816 has explicitly asked about the state of the patient.
Responses that were fulfilled in less than 30-40 seconds (depending on the survey length) or gave the date of treatment in the future or before 2020 were discarded as invalid.
The author has not conducted and did not have access to any other similar surveys.
Specific Details per Survey
USA-0816: A small number of responses were received the next day, on 08/17.
USA-0803 had an additional question Q7. How severe was the disease? (select one: Mild – like a common cold; Moderate; Severe; but without hospitalization; Severe, with hospitalization)
TX-0711 was sent to the ages 40-90 years in Texas.
See the Attachment for the exact wording of questions, audiences, and other details of the surveys.
Processing
The data were analyzed with the time granularity of one-third of a month: 1-10, 11-20, 21-end. The January and February treatments were included in the data for the first third of March. The results from the first third of March to the second third of August have been calculated.
A data entering anomaly was detected in USA-0803 and US-0816. A disproportionately large number of responses were on the 3rd and 16th of each of the previous months for these surveys, respectively. On the assumption that some of the respondents wanted to specify a month, but the not exact day, the excess data on these days were spread among all thirds of the same month, proportionately to the weighted number of responses in these thirds, with additional weighing for USA-0803.
The patients younger than 40 were included in the analysis, but weighted down with the coefficient 0.5, except when stated otherwise. There are different ways to think about the treatment of such patients. On the one hand, they have a low risk of death or hospitalization. On the other hand, they might want such treatment anyway. Also, they are capable of the coronavirus transmission, so early anti-viral therapy of such patients might benefit the public at large. Finally, some respondents might have entered <40 in error.
The responses do not provide information on how early a patient was able to obtain HCQ if prescribed. Also, the study did not use any data on what share of symptomatic COVID-19 infected persons consulted a doctor. That limits its interpretation. To partially compensate for that, the data on the total number of the cases in a certain location/time was used and expressed as a percentage of the total number of treatments in that location. See even lines (small font) in the attached Summary.xlsx.
Super Regions
To achieve better statistical significance, and because of strong interdependence between New England and Middle Atlantic, some census divisions (called “regions” by SurveyMonkey) were combined, yielding six super-regions.
Table 1. Regions and Super Regions
| Super-Region | Region | States |
| NE + MA | New England | Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut |
| NE + MA | Middle Atlantic | New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania |
| East North Central | East North Central | Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, Wisconsin |
| South Atlantic | South Atlantic | Delaware, Maryland, District of Columbia, Virginia, West Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Florida |
| WNC + ESC + Mountain | West North Central | Minnesota, Iowa, Missouri, North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska, Kansas |
| WNC + ESC + Mountain | East South Central | Kentucky, Tennessee, Alabama, Mississippi |
| WNC + ESC + Mountain | Mountain | Montana, Idaho, Wyoming, Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona, Utah, Nevada |
| Pacific | Pacific | Washington, Oregon, California, Alaska, Hawaii |
| West South Central | West South Central | Arkansas, Louisiana, Oklahoma, Texas |
Analysis
The data from USA-0803 and USA-0816 were combined. The results were calculated for the US and each of six super-regions, broken down by month thirds.
Separately, the data from TX-0711 and USA-0816 were combined to calculate results for Texas.
Discussion
The responses do not explicitly reveal which HCQ-based treatment regimen was used. Outside of clinical trials16, most doctors probably have been prescribing HCQ + AZ, with or without Zinc, starting at the end of March. Also, responses do not reveal how early or late in the disease, the treatment was prescribed.
Suspension of the HCQ usage in the last third of May coincides with the publication by The Lancet of Mehra et al.19, published on May 22. That paper was retracted on June 4, after the damage had been done.
It is unclear how the number of patients (i.e., individuals who were infected, had symptoms of COVID-19, and consulted with a doctor) relates to the number of infection cases. Some individuals with COVID-19 did not get tested or received false-negative results. There were also false positives. Some COVID-19 sufferers never sought testing or treatment. The share of people who were incorrectly diagnosed or did not seek treatment has been changing throughout time.
The data on small size HCQ prescriptions20 allows us to estimate that ~25,000 small prescriptions were filled weekly in April, translating into an average 3,600 prescriptions per day. Additionally, some patients were treated with HCQ in hospitals, allowing the number of daily prescriptions to be rounded up to 4,000. There were, on average, 30,000 new daily cases reported in April21. 4,000 daily HCQ prescriptions are 13.3% of the 30,000 daily positive test results. In this study, 15.9% of the patients were prescribed HCQ in April. That might be interpreted as 84% of individuals with positive test results consulted with a doctor, in the absence of other factors.
From late March to early May, about 150,000 US patients received HCQ for COVID-19. HHS OSE found 97 adverse reports22 of all kinds (misspelled as 347 in the FDA Memorandum17) associated with HCQ and chloroquine during that period.
This study shows that Remdesivir was widely used in March-April before its emergency approval on May 1. Surprisingly, its usage throughout the epidemic was, on average, 70% of the HCQ usage. It sharply declined in the last third of June, possibly on disappointing clinical results23 and evidence of liver toxicity24, but resumed at the nearly previous level in July.
Study Limitations
There are limitations usual for studies based on a population survey. Most values in the Summary spreadsheet are computed from small sample sizes. Other limitations are mentioned in subsection Processing.
Conclusions
Patients’ side statistical information about the use of hydroxychloroquine for COVID-19 patients was collected. Using it, this study has found:
- HCQ was used for the treatment of COVID-19 in the US since January 2020. From January to August 16, 13.5% of COVID-19 patients ages 40+ were prescribed Hydroxychloroquine in the US.
- The New England and Middle Atlantic census divisions suffered from the largest COVID-19 mortality and accounted for most COVID-19 deaths from mid-March through mid-June. They also had the lowest utilization of HCQ (average 6.1% for patients ages 40+) in the matching period early March — late May.
- Everywhere in the US, prescription of the HCQ nearly ceased in the last third of May but resumed in June and has been fluctuating around 16% for patients ages 40+.
The raw responses data is attached. It can be mined further, especially when combined with publicly available statistics on the COVID-19 hospitalizations, deaths, tests, infection cases, and how many days pass from the first COVID-19 symptoms and the start of HCQ based treatment. Eventually, more data would allow testing hypotheses:
- Early HCQ-based treatment of adults of all ages with COVID-19 symptoms correlates with decreased COVID-19 infection and/or hospitalizations cases 10-20 days later25.
- Early HCQ-based treatment of ages 40+ with COVID-19 symptoms correlates with decreased COVID-19 deaths and/or ICU admissions 20-35 days later.
No Competing Interests
The author declares no competing interest.
No funding was provided for this work.
All relevant ethical guidelines have been followed.
Attachments
Hydroxychloroquine-Actual-Use-USA-Attachment.zip
References
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2. Bernaola, N. et al. Observational Study of the Efficiency of Treatments in Patients Hospitalized with Covid-19 in Madrid. medRxiv 2020.07.17.20155960 (2020) doi:10.1101/2020.07.17.20155960.
3. d’Arminio Monforte, A., Tavelli, A., Bai, F., Marchetti, G. & Cozzi-Lepri, A. Effectiveness of Hydroxychloroquine in COVID-19 disease: A done and dusted situation? Int. J. Infect. Dis. (2020) doi:10.1016/j.ijid.2020.07.056.
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4. Lagier, J.-C. et al. Outcomes of 3,737 COVID-19 patients treated with hydroxychloroquine/azithromycin and other regimens in Marseille, France: A retrospective analysis. Travel Med. Infect. Dis. 36, 101791 (2020). https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1477893920302817
5. Scholz, M., Derwand, R. & Zelenko, V. COVID-19 Outpatients – Early Risk-Stratified Treatment with Zinc Plus Low Dose Hydroxychloroquine and Azithromycin: A Retrospective Case Series Study. (2020) doi:10.20944/preprints202007.0025.v1.
6. Anonymous. Early treatment with hydroxychloroquine: a country-based analysis. https://hcqtrial.com/.
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9. Sermo. WAVE I: March 25 – 27, Sermo’s COVID-19 Real Time Barometer Study. https://public-cdn.sermo.com/covid19/1f/34e6/e6afc7/afc7c94663b1ff7c89f54478ee/wave-i-sermo-covid-19-global-analysis.pdf (2020).
10. Sermo. WAVE 2: March 30 – April 2. TOPIC: Treatments & Efficacy. Sermo’s COVID-19 Real Time Barometer Study. https://public-cdn.sermo.com/covid19/72/2314/1447ce/47ce8d4abd94b5da7124cb64fe/wave-2-sermo-covid-19-global-analysis.pdf (2020).
11. Sermo. WAVE III: April 6 – 9, Sermo’s COVID-19 Real Time Barometer Study. https://public-cdn.sermo.com/covid19/dd/c7f7/f7344a/344a00427889ec27e2b8df1c15/w3-sermo-covid-19-barometer.pdf (2020).
12. Goldstein, L. Hydroxychloroquine-based COVID-19 Treatment, A Systematic Review of Clinical Evidence and Expert Opinion from Physicians’ Surveys. Watts Up With That? https://wattsupwiththat.com/2020/07/07/hydroxychloroquine-based-covid-19-treatment-a-systematic-review-of-clinical-evidence-and-expert-opinion-from-physicians-surveys/ (2020).
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14. CORONA is the COVID19 Registry of Off-Label & New Agents. A project of the Center for Cytokine Storm Treatment & Laboratory (CSTL) and the Castleman Disease Collaborative Network (CDCN). Tableau Software
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16. Shehab, N., Lovegrove, M. & Budnitz, D. S. US Hydroxychloroquine, Chloroquine, and Azithromycin Outpatient Prescription Trends, October 2019 Through March 2020. JAMA Intern. Med. (2020) doi:10.1001/jamainternmed.2020.2594.
17. FDA. Memorandum Explaining Basis for Revocation of Emergency Use Authorization for Emergency Use of Chloroquine Phosphate and Hydroxychloroquine Sulfate. (2020).
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25. Goldstein, L. Hypothesis: Restrictions on Hydroxychloroquine Contribute to the COVID-19 Cases Surge. Watts Up With That? https://wattsupwiththat.com/2020/07/05/hypothesis-restrictions-on-hydroxychloroquine-contribute-to-the-covid-19-cases-surge/ (2020).
Fact 1: Covid 19 penetrates and replicates inside cells.
Fact 2: In the laboratory Zinc interferes with coronavirus replication.
Fact 3: Zinc cannot penetrate the cell wall.
Fact 4: Hydroxychloroquine does penetrate the cell wall.
Probability 1: Hydroxychloroquine will pull available Zinc into the cell when it penetrates where the Zinc will interfere with virus replication
New insights on the antiviral effects of chloroquine against coronavirus: what to expect for COVID-19?
The multiple molecular mechanisms by which chloroquine can achieve such results remain to be further explored. … preliminary data indicate that chloroquine interferes with SARS-CoV-2 attempts to acidify the lysosomes and presumably inhibits cathepsins, which require a low pH for optimal cleavage of SARS-CoV-2 spike protein
It acts as a border guard, facilitating entry of Zn, and inhibiting entry of SARS-CoV-2, which makes it a viable prophylactic treatment for at risk individuals.
Zinc seems to be very important for HCQ efficacy.
It’s been reported that the predominant strains of the virus hitting the NE are more more virulent. I’m unable to open the attachments but was wondering what do results look like within regions?
I think it’s more likely that some of the NE hospitals are more virulent, e.g., Elmhurst in NYC.
It could also be related to the much lower use of HCQ (mainly for political reasons). It sucks to be one of the people that died because your doctor didn’t like Trump.
I doubt the “more virulent” strain claim. The outlier death rate in NY, NJ, CT, etc. were due to their seemingly genocidal nursing home policy.
Lower CFR during this second wave is due to lower vitamin D deficiency. It’s quite obvious to me, you can see it in the global statistics. CFR is higher now in southern hemisphere nations during their winter and CFR is decreased globally at this moment because the northern hemisphere has a much higher population. It will begin to go back up again in October when the northern hemisphere moves into winter months.
Now the attachment links work
Well since most of the virus hitting other parts of the US can from NYers fleeing NY I am guess the strain is the same.
rleewinters
You said (without support), “Zinc cannot penetrate the cell wall.” Perhaps you would explain why so many people take zinc supplements, and zinc gluconate is available OTC for the early treatment of colds.
There are natural ionophores in foods, e.g., quercetin in apples, onions and other things; EGCG in green teas and other things.
Just because someone takes a zinc supplement doesn’t mean that it’s necessarily doing optimum good. Some forms absorb better than others, and a selenium deficiency can keep Zn+2 bound to it’s serum transport protein (metallothionein, I think it’s called) and not be bio-available.
HA I responded much the same, but can see you beat me to it. Same page again! Thank’s icisil
Indeed – have one Brazil nut a day to maintain selenium sufficieny
I hate Brazil nuts
Thanks for that; I didn’t know about the Brazil nuts. Naturally, right now they are in a world wide recall, as the crop from Bolivia seems to come with free salmonella.
I totally agree the mechanism by which HCQ stops the virus from replicating is it acts a zinc ionosphere and zinc once in our cells makes the ACE-2 connector molecule, slight positive which stops the entire class of viruses replicating.
Obviously our cells would have and have developed using evolution a bioactive chemical that works as the best evolutionary designed zinc ionosphere for our cells to protect them from ACE-2 connecting viruses.
We have zinc in our blood system. It would be unbelievable that our body does not protect using the zinc by developing using evolution a perfect zinc ionophere.
Vit. D enables our cells to access their copy of our DNA. Our cells access the DNA to make micro chemical factories that sit on our cells.
The micro chemical factories, on command of from our cells and stimulus to our cells, produce bioactive chemicals to protect the cells and hence the groups of cells that are our heart, our lungs, our throat, our nerves, and so on.
So in the case of the micro factory that produces our cell’s zinc ionophere, when active free Vit. D is low only a small percentage of our cells get these micro factories and the natural internal zinc ionophere.
If almost all of our cells have our internal cellular zinc ionosphere, the virus cannot replicate.
The percentage of our cells that have the special micro chemical factories, is dependent on the level of Vit. D in our blood stream.
An observational fact, to support the above statement is there is an astonishing multiplication in the number of Covid deaths in Vit. D deficient people
Regardless of sex or age there is a 19 times more ‘chance’ of dying from covid or having damage to organs for those people who have a Vit D level of less than 20 ng/ml as compared to those who have a Vit. D level in their blood (measured) that is greater than 30 ng/ml.
Coronavirus: Black African deaths three times higher than white Britons – study
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-52574931
82% of the US black population, 69% of the US Hispanic, and 42% of the US general population is Vitamin D deficient.
Prevalence and correlates of vitamin D deficiency in US adults.
https://tahomaclinic.com/Private/Articles4/WellMan/Forrest%202011%20-%20Prevalence%20and%20correlates%20of%20vitamin%20D%20deficiency%20in%20US%20adults.pdf
4000 UI/day of Vitamin D supplements is required to raise the serum 25(OH)D of the entire population above 30 ng/ml.
https://emerginnova.com/patterns-of-covid19-mortality-and-vitamin-d-an-indonesian-study/
Patterns of COVID-19 Mortality and Vitamin D: An Indonesian Study
Vitamin D Insufficient Patients 12.55 times more likely to die, blood serum 25(OH)D level from 21 to 29 ng/ml
Vitamin D Deficient Patients 19.12 times more likely to die, Vitamin D blood serum level less than 20 ng/ml
Vitamin D ‘normal’ for this study is 25(0H)D above 30 ng/ml.
For Vitamin D status, cases were classified based on their blood serum of activated Vit. D 25(OH)D levels:
(1) normal – serum 25(OH)D of greater than 30 ng/ml,
(2) insufficient – serum 25(OH)D from 21 to 29 ng/ml, and
(3) deficient – serum 25(OH)D of less than 20 ng/ml.
Clyde,
And as well… substances which are known to be zinc ionophores are common in various foods and supplements.
Zinc above a certain level is toxic inside of cells…it causes them to undergo apoptosis…programmed cell death.
This was the whole point of the research into zinc ionophores…to induce apoptosis in cancer cells.
(The trick of course, with any treatment, is how exactly does one target certain cells and not others? Drugs and molecules and atoms and ions do not care where we want them to go when we ingest them)
Decades of study have failed to show an antiviral effect except in cells in a dish.
And the effect in vitro has been known since at least 1968. A long time for no known beneficial effect to have been demonstrated in live subjects. It took less than five years after the drugs were introduced for the positive effect on RA and lupus to be found, purely by association in people taking the drugs for malaria who also had RA or lupus.
When beneficial effects are strong and useful and consistent, it gets noticed quickly…even in drugs not taken by millions of people over several decades.
No one can explain how it could possibly be the case this drug or this combo helps but only for this virus and only when no one is actually conducting a careful clinical trial.
You are free not to take it.
Good luck!
Zn can penetrate, but it’s hard. Ionophores have show to carry the mineral that they attract, through the barrier and increase their cellular concentration. There, fixed it.
Zn works better when it can more effectively go to where it does what it does. Since diet provides us with ionophores, but varies greatly, supplementing with ionophoric compounds enhances the effect!
It has been known for some time that zinc interferes with coronavirus replication.
https://journals.plos.org/plospathogens/article?id=10.1371/journal.ppat.1001176
The problem is cellular introduction.
Posting the same comment over and over again is annoying and insulting.
This is the definition of trolling.
+1 McGineley
Clyde asked for a source.
Are you the troll police ?
Irony alert.
NO, I’m the troll police, and I’d point out all these trolls but I’ve been defunded. Damn dems.
I take 25 mg zinc daily along with tonic water. I also take the rind from 2 grapefruit, cover with 3 to 4 inches of water and simmer for 2 hours, covered,on the stove. Turn off the heat and ket sit on the stove covered until morning. Take 2 tablespoons of the liquid along with a tsp of honey every 3 to 4 hours until you feel better. It works, breaks up congestion…my mom’s cure for us when the cold/flu season started.
Ever since I read Dr. Ror Spencer’s March 18th post about HCQ I’ve been doing Tonic water and one a day pills that list zinc. I turn 76 in a few days, so far so good.
8 kids now in our 50’s and 60’s, all followibg min’s ‘treatment’, very little illness! Hmmmm…mom was right!
I started taking tonic via my sodastream, my problem is when i take zinc i feel awful that day, have tried a couple different forms, following directions, just in general feel awful, like a bad hangover.
Does anyone know what that means, maybe i have good levels of zinc already and the supplement puts me over the edge to detrimental levels?
Metals in general kill all microorganisms and cells.
That is why these are trace nutrients.
The effect is powerful and seems to be close to universal, with little evidence of resistance even when metals like copper are used for years on end on crops as fungicides and bactericides.
The effect has a name…the Oligodynamic effect:
“a toxic effect of metal ions on living cells, algae, molds, spores, fungi,viruses, prokaryotic and eukaryotic microorganisms, even in relatively low concentrations.”
It has been well known for centuries, although probably not why or how.
There is a darn good reason for tightly regulating metal ions inside of a cell.
It makes them die.
Yep, copper handrails, copper door knobs, copper filters, copper piping, copper utensils, copper pots and pans all kill viruses, often in just a few minutes
Snake oil salesmen have been pushing something called “colloidal silver” on the unwary for years and years, often charging huge amounts of money for something that is ineffective and can be dangerous or cause other problems…like the skin turning some weird color and staying that way for years…or more likely forever!
See here:
“Is Colloidal Silver Safe?
Colloidal silver can cause serious side effects. The most common is argyria, a bluish-gray discoloration of the skin, which is usually permanent.”
https://www.nccih.nih.gov/health/colloidal-silver
Silver will most definitely kill microorganisms on surfaces. As will copper.
But if these metals had any way of tipping the scales in the billions of years old war between viruses and cells, it would have already happened by evolution.
And since people are using info from the NIH to imply that the NIH is saying what these advocates are implying, here is what the NIH says about zinc:
“Can zinc be harmful?
Yes, if you get too much. Signs of too much zinc include nausea, vomiting, loss of appetite, stomach cramps, diarrhea, and headaches. When people take too much zinc for a long time, they sometimes have problems such as low copper levels, lower immunity, and low levels of HDL cholesterol (the “good” cholesterol).
The daily upper limits for zinc are listed below. ”
The chart gives 40mg as the safe limit for an adult for long term daily supplementation.
As I have said repeatedly, anyone who focuses on one or another nutrient instead of adhering to the common sense proposition that we need to get the correct amount of ALL nutrients, is putting themselves at an unnecessary risk.
Having adequate amounts of all nutrients is essential. This is why they are called essential nutrients.
One cannot take a huge amount of one thing and alleviate a deficiency of another thing.
And many of the nutrients are in a delicate balance within our body and our cells.
We need zinc for a healthy immune system, but that is also true of a list of nutrients.
The idea we can pump zinc into our cells and act as an intracellular antiviral is pure quackery from a medical perspective.
Too much zinc can have a deleterious impact on immune health, as well as other body systems.
“What is zinc and what does it do?
Zinc is a nutrient that people need to stay healthy. Zinc is found in cells throughout the body. It helps the immune system fight off invading bacteria and viruses. The body also needs zinc to make proteins and DNA, the genetic material in all cells. During pregnancy, infancy, and childhood, the body needs zinc to grow and develop properly. Zinc also helps wounds heal and is important for proper senses of taste and smell.”
But also,
“Can zinc be harmful?
Yes, if you get too much. Signs of too much zinc include nausea, vomiting, loss of appetite, stomach cramps, diarrhea, and headaches. When people take too much zinc for a long time, they sometimes have problems such as low copper levels, lower immunity, and low levels of HDL cholesterol (the “good” cholesterol).”
https://ods.od.nih.gov/factsheets/Zinc-Consumer/
Here is a summary of body of clinical research on zinc:
“Zinc has been used for colds in forms that are taken orally (by mouth), such as lozenges, tablets, or syrup, or used intranasally (in the nose), such as swabs or gels.
Oral Zinc
A 2012 evaluation of 17 studies of various types of zinc lozenges, tablets, or syrup found that zinc can reduce the duration of colds in adults. Two evaluations of three studies of high-dose zinc acetate lozenges in adults, conducted in 2015 and 2016, found that they shortened colds.
Some participants in studies that tested zinc for colds reported that the zinc caused a bad taste or nausea.
Long-term use of high doses of zinc can cause low copper levels, reduced immunity, and low levels of HDL cholesterol (the “good” cholesterol). Zinc may interact with drugs, including antibiotics and penicillamine (a drug used to treat rheumatoid arthritis).
Intranasal Zinc
The use of zinc products inside the nose, such as gels or swabs, may cause loss of the sense of smell, which may be long-lasting or permanent. In 2009, the FDA warned consumers to stop using several intranasal zinc products marketed as cold remedies because of this risk.
Prior to the warnings about effects on the sense of smell, a few studies of intranasal zinc had suggested a possible benefit against cold symptoms. However, the risk of a serious and lasting side effect outweighs any possible benefit in the treatment of a minor illness.”
https://www.nccih.nih.gov/health/flu-and-colds-in-depth
Anyone making claims that go beyond this is stating an opinion which is contradicted by years of careful research.
Some people take vitamin supplements with non-Beta Carotene vitamin A which actually does harm to the body. Some people drink tiger’s pee and mix rhino horn into their bird nest soup. Some people wear copper bracelets to ward off every imaginable disease/syndrome.
All viruses replicate inside of cells.
Does this work for all viruses, in your view, or only for this particular strain of this particular virus?
BTW…no one has yet posted any evidence that HCQ has been studied and proven by evidence to be a zinc ionophore. CQ has such a study. And it may be one. But one study with no replication efforts does not prove anything beyond doubt.
The original in vitro research that was the justification for using HCQ and CQ to see if they helped with viral infections did not involve zinc, nor did it involve antibiotics.
The research that showed CQ was a zinc ionophore was not studying an antiviral effect…it was looking for evidence of some justification to try the drug as an anticancer treatment. After the in vitro research, the drugs were both tried against cancers, and against viruses…many times, over many years.
None ever found any cause to believe the drugs were useful as cancer drugs or as antiviral drugs in people with cancer or with viral illnesses.
So what is the explanation for how this drug could work against one virus…this one, and not others?
Large doses of zinc have been shown in some studies but not others to help with the common cold…not to prevent one, but to help some people get over one sooner. It did not work for flu or any other infections…and the effect was NOT confirmed in all studies. Like most studies involving nutritional supplements to treat diseases, the results were not especially strong in the studies that found some benefit, and were non existent in other studies.
And the investigations that looked at zinc in common colds used zinc lozenges, dissolved slowly in the mouth. It helped some people have a shorter duration of a cold…slightly. In some studies. Not in others.
The Henry Ford hospital retrospective study that some people find so compelling, found that adding the z pak antibiotic to HCQ gave a result only slightly better than taking neither. The opposite of what would be expected if both drugs had a benefit.
And incredibly, some people have asserted, with no evidence (not that evidence ever was important to HCQ assertions), that hospital studies that used the gold standard to test HCQ, failed because they used TOO MUCH of it! Even though no one has ever shown a result that even IMPLIED that the drug’s effectiveness was inversely dose dependent…IOW that too much would not work, you have to take JUST THE RIGHT AMOUNT! Although these same people have no research to show how on Earth they could possibly know any such thing. And it is illogical and unscientific. Toxicity issues do not make antiviral or antibiotic drugs stop working…they simply make it dangerous.
Most commonly, the the idea is to take as much as something as is not toxic enough to be more harmful than the illness being treated.
In short, HCQ advocates make ever argument one can dream up…and even though they are mutually contradictory, none of the advocates ever criticizes other advocates who advance contradictory assertions.
Or notes the moving goalpost effect.
Or pays one bit of attention to any of the studies that disprove any benefit.
I know what all of this reminds me of…it reminds of warmista jackassery.
In nearly every way I can think of.
Stating with the saintly prophets who knew it was “the cure” before they had any possibility of anything like proof, or even strong evidence, and who are known to have lied.
Right through to people who just believe it, no matter what evidence to the contrary exists.
There is not one consistent argument for a benefit that holds any water, whatsoever.
Except that doctors who treat coronavirus patients (such as a doctor in my immediate family) with the HCQ/AZ/Z protocol have seen very good results and continue to use it.
Has this doctor ever heard of double-blind controlled experiments? I didn’t think so. Using it because it might work and it’s relatively harmless is one thing; claiming that it actually works is different.
You propagate a meme that you do not understand when you rhetorically write: “Has this doctor ever heard of double-blind controlled experiments?” This torture of language preclude thoughtful discourse.
Let’s just assume it works as well as many think. The cost of NOT using HCQ + Zn, results in a death rate by up to an order of magnitude while waiting for the double blind study that many hope never takes place.
What you do not understand, is that evidence and placebo based double blind study are not mutually exclusive, as you are want to believe.
Good doctors are informed and guided by RCTs, but they are not ruled by them, and can function apart from them when necessary. The goal is health and well being, not conformity to protocols.
“The goal is health and well being…”
Which necessitates making distinctions between things that might do some good and those known to not have any value for a specific ailment.
Zpak is not without contraindications, and HCQ certainly is not.
Both together have a known risk which is more than additive, particularly for those who are old and sick to begin with, particularly those that have heart issues, and MOST particularly for those that have a prolonged Q-T interval.
There is a risk for a certain percentage of people who take HCQ and/or zpak which is very definitely nonzero.
The risk for death for everyone who becomes infected with SARS-CoV-2 is thought to be somewhere around 0.5%, and is almost surely somewhere between 0.1% and 1%.
But that is the risk for everyone collectively. The risk for anyone who is not infected is miniscule. The risk of death from COVID-19, for anyone who is not old with comorbidities, is way below that percentage…perhaps one tenth to one hundredth as much risk of death for someone who is healthy and/or young.
There are estimates as high as 10% for the number of people who might be at some risk from HCQ and/or Zpak, but especially for both at once, and especially for anyone who is elderly with any cardiac issues.
From this set of facts, it should be plainly evident to anyone who really wants to think about it, that the very people who are at most risk from the virus are the ones who may well be at grave risk from the drugs, namely those who have the virus and are old or have cardiac issues.
For everyone else, the risk from these drugs might easily be in excess of the risk from the virus…which is very low for the the young, the otherwise healthy, and for those who are not even infected and having a serious/severe case.
What actual doctors (and other medical professionals, and anyone else concerned about ethics) do is weigh the potential risk against the possible benefit.
Even if it is a wash, it is a bad risk.
But this drug combo may easily have a greater risk of harm than the virus for any particular person.
And inappropriate antibiotic usage surely does have a very bad risk overall benefit profile for us all when used on people who do not actually have a bacterial infection. It is just plain stupid and contrary to medical ethics and common sense.
As is giving a drug when a large amount of clinical data indicates it has no benefit for treating this virus.
So, to blithely claim
Unnecessary antibiotic usage has it own set of very serious concerns that could have grave implications for every person in the world down the road, and Z-pak is one that already has such a concern made more immediate by it’s status as being in a distinct class of antibiotic. And there is no surer way to make antibiotics useless and create superbugs than using them inappropriately and recklessly. And once a gene for resistance evolves in a single bacterium, the gene can be spread far and wide to other bacteria. The whole thing is foolhardy in the extreme.
Anyone who blithely asserts it(this “treatment”) cannot hurt, so why the hell not just hand it out to everyone who has the virus, is being IMO the very worst sort of jackass, and is an actual dangerous person…again IMO.
An opinion backed up by evidence and logic and attention to all of the available information and things to be considered.
It is so far beyond what is ethical it is difficult to think of exactly how to describe it.
Please stop with your whinging about HCQ safety. It’s safer than acetaminophen and other OTC medications.
icisil
You whined, “Please stop with your whinging about HCQ safety. It’s safer than acetaminophen and other OTC medications.”
In other words, “Don’t confuse me with facts! My mind is made up.”
No Clyde, my mind is not made up, though I am impressed by the evidence. Also, I don’t give a damn what Trump thinks about HCQ. Do you realize how foolish and biased you look by responding the way you did to my stating a fact. You can get into trouble with acetaminophen much easier and quicker than you can with HCQ. Look up how many cases of acetaminophen poisoning there are every year. Yet it is sold OTC and HCQ is not.
“You can get into trouble with acetaminophen much easier and quicker than you can with HCQ. Look up how many cases of acetaminophen poisoning there are every year. Yet it is sold OTC and HCQ is not.”
Oh FFS!
I am not gonna bother debunking that obvious malarkey, except to point out the relative amounts of each that is taken.
There is a long list of things we all need to have every day, that would kill us if we took too much.
A tablet of pure vitamin A as big as an aspirin would be a one way ticket to the morgue.
So what?
As as for whinging…I am not the one telling other people to shut up.
Whinging means complaining…like getting your panties in a knot because someone disagrees with you.
You want me to shut up because there is nothing factual or logic based that you can counter me with.
In case you missed it…this entire thread is about an article which is about…HCQ!
Jackass.
That should be vitamin D of course, not A.
Vitamin D is sandwiched between cyanide and strychnine on oral LD 50 charts for common substances.
10mg/kg
Listed as “extremely toxic”.
Acetaminophen?
Slightly to moderately toxic.
It causes toxicity of the liver.
But it is not because it is toxic in small doses…it is because some people take it like it is candy…they have no concept of toxicity.
And since it is in so many homes, it is a common cause of children getting poisoned.
LD50 for acetaminophen is given as 3000mg/kg.
Three grams per kilogram.
So a 100 kilogram man would need to take 300 grams to have a 50% chance of dying.
Some small children have died from a single pill of chloroquine. The lethal dose threshold is about twice the therapeutic dose.
MM
https://scitechdaily.com/mind-over-matter-placebos-prove-powerfuleven-when-people-know-theyre-taking-one/
Yes, the mind is obviously inextricably involved in the healing as well as the deterioration of the body. Neuropeptides are very powerful.
…except that nations that use it frequently in their treatment of covid patients have one-fifth the death rate per million population as those countries that use it only infrequently!
Uganda uses more HCQ than any other nation and has reported just 13 deaths from C-19!
Magic wand effect?
AI virus?
The median age of the population in Uganda is below 16. That is why the death rate is so low. The young don’t get sick.
Other countries in the region have similarly low rates of infection and death, so why do you just focus on Uganda?
No kidding, I mean when the patient is almost dead they sprinkle a little HCQ on them and proclaim “see this sh*t doesn’t work.”
Well said, Nicholas.
Chloroquine, and by extension hydroxychloroquine, has been known to be effective against coronaviruses for years. See this study for proof:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1232869/
Wade: Some people have faith and cannot be reasoned with.
This link, that we have known for a decade and a half, is so inconvenient that you will see 1000’s of words from people trying to confuse other people by torturing words to death. I call it torture because it’s a futile attempt to reframe claims and then strike them down.
To some people seeking an outcome is more important than seeking truth.
By extension?
What principle of pharmacopeia guides that assertion?
In any case, Wade, you are referring to a single study using cells in a glass dish.
And not human cells, and not epithelial cells, and not cells from any part of the respiratory system, but a particular line of special immortal cells from the kidney of a green monkey that died over 55 years ago.
In vitro studies say nothing about efficacy in live animals, let alone sick people.
Ever.
Anyone who knows the first thing about drug research knows this and has known it for as long as they have been familiar with the subject.
So, not only is one study not “proof” of anything, but only one data point of evidence that can only be taken as factual if and when it is shown to be repeatable and reproducible.
And even then, it is only valid to say what the actual evidence indicates: That CQ blocks infection of Vero cells with the virus it was tested with.
It says nothing about what happens in an actual green monkey kidney.
It certainly says nothing about what happens in human airway epithelium cells.
It comes no place close to saying anything at all in a actual live human being.
And it says nothing about any ability to cure a viral infection in a person who has an infectious disease.
So the assertion, “Chloroquine, and by extension hydroxychloroquine, has been known to be effective against coronaviruses for years” is only proof of one thing: That the person who said it is either woefully and almost comically ignorant (this is too serious a subject to call it comical, no matter how clownishly uninformed) or a deliberate liar.
I do not known about Wade, but I know Mario knows all of this very well…as it has been discussed here over and over again for month after month.
But here is is again, for anyone who is new here or slow on the uptake:
The drugs CQ and HCQ have been tested in animals and people against viruses for years, both before and after the linked “proof” study.
And recently against have been tested against this virus in actual human airway epithelial cells.
Not to mention a fat of very large gold standard clinical trials.
First the older news…the follow up work in animals to test for actual activity in a live host vs SARS-CoV (the old one). This study tested the malaria drugs and a bunch of other stuff that showed activity in vitro, and found no antiviral effect vs the actual virus, and here is a quote and a link to the study:
“…in vitro inhibitors of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus (SARS-CoV) were evaluated for inhibition in the mouse SARS-CoV replication model.”
“Anti-inflammatory agents, chloroquine, amodiaquin and pentoxifylline, were also inactive in vivo…”
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/17176632/
Note this research was conducted and published by the same organization, but years later…it is follow research, and demonstrated that the in vitro effects did not translate into live animals. Note also that a whole raft of compounds needed to be tested for efficacy in animals…because lots of stuff blocked the virus in vitro.
It is extremely common for drugs to work in cell cultures but not in animals.
In fact, no drug ever gets to even phase 1 human trials if it does not work in live animals.
Having an effect in vitro means nothing.
CQ also prevents cells in vitro from getting Influenza A, but has no value in animals (or people).
Here is that research paper:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4941887/
But there is so much more. These drugs have been tested for decades against anything anyone can think of…the only thing more amazing for the endless optimism is the endless funding for drugs that do not work on one thing after another.
Here is a look at actual primates and this actual virus, in which the actual virus was used on live animals to see if HCQ with or without z pak, cured or blocked infection, the result of which was that there was no benefit and the drugs flat out do not work:
Hydroxychloroquine use against SARS-CoV-2 infection in non-human primates
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-020-2558-4
“We evaluated the antiviral activity of HCQ both in vitro and in SARS-CoV-2-infected macaques. HCQ showed antiviral activity in African green monkey kidney cells (VeroE6) but not in a model of reconstituted human airway epithelium. In macaques, we tested different treatment strategies in comparison to placebo, before and after peak viral load, alone or in combination with azithromycin (AZTH). Neither HCQ nor HCQ+AZTH showed a significant effect on the viral load levels in any of the tested compartments. When the drug was used as a pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP), HCQ did not confer protection against acquisition of infection. Our findings do not support the use of HCQ, either alone or in combination with AZTH, as an antiviral treatment for COVID-19 in humans.”
That last one referenced using the drugs in actual human airway epithelial cells.
Here is an article that explores why virologists do not use human cells, and use instead kidney cells from a green monkey that died in the early 1960s:
“It’s not at all uncommon for individual scientists—or even entire subfields of research—to waste their time in just this way, by choosing the most familiar animal or “model system” as the basis for their work, even when it’s not well suited to the question at hand. Rodent research findings, for example, have been notoriously misleading on a number of important topics, including potential treatments for amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) and tuberculosis. Cell lines, too, can be misapplied out of habit or convenience. The ones derived from an African green monkey kidney, known as Vero cells, are especially popular among virologists, in part because they contain fewer antiviral proteins known as interferons than other cells, and thus provide a fertile breeding ground for certain viruses that are otherwise quite fickle and difficult to grow in the lab. (Lab mice have long been used to study cancer for the same reason: They happen to be startlingly adept at getting tumors.)”
Here, let me single out the money quote: “The ones derived from an African green monkey kidney, known as Vero cells, are especially popular among virologists, in part because they contain fewer antiviral proteins known as interferons…”
Virologists use them not because they are good at giving useful information, but because they are familiar and easy.
Now here is where it gets interesting.
Pay attention!
See here:
“Whereas hydroxychloroquine does appear to stop SARS-CoV-2 from infecting Vero cells, it fails to do the same for human lung cells in a dish. According to research from Stefan Pöhlmann, head of the Infection Biology Unit at the German Primate Center in Göttingen, and his collaborators, the devil was in the details of how the cells interact with the SARS-CoV-2’s dreaded ‘spike’ protein. Human lung cells contain at least two different enzymes that can help the virus sneak through their membranes. With Vero cells, however, only one of those modes of entry is available—and it turns out to be the one that hydroxychloroquine will block.”
https://www.wired.com/story/scientists-may-be-using-the-wrong-cells-to-study-covid-19/
I have been pointing this out here since March that no one who actually studies viruses or immunology thinks HCQ or CQ work by being a zinc ionophore.
For one thing, none of that cell research on blocking corona virus infection used zinc or any antibiotics.
A human body is nothing whatsoever like a plate full of cells, and green monkey kidney cells are nothing like human cells that line out airway.
Nothing.
Like.
Them.
BTW…that wired article has dozens of links to relevant research on this set of topics.
Including this one, to a paper showing that this effect seen in Vero cells in not seen in human airway epithelial cells:
Chloroquine does not inhibit infection of human lung cells with SARS-CoV-2
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-020-2575-3
Anyone who wants to really have all the information ought to be reading all of this stuff, and all of the references. It is months of reading. I have spent the past six+ months reading this stuff…over and over again.
Here is a great discussion of the entire subject with a large number of excellent references:
Rethinking the role of hydroxychloroquine in the treatment of COVID‐19
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7267640/
Nest time you talk to scientists (and many of us here are actual scientists) about “proof, Wade, try harder to know what you are talking about.
HCQ = Windmill; Nicholas McGinley = Don Quixote
Or is it…
HCQ = White Whale; Nicholas McGinley = Ahab
The invective has me leaning toward the second entry… how are your legs, Nicholas?
This article and this thread is about this topic and these drugs.
What is the matter…you have nothing substantive to contradict what I just said…or you did not read a word of any of those reports?
Or both?
I am gonna go with both.
You obviously have no idea what the idiom you referenced means.
For one thing, nothing I said is an attack.
And I was not responding to anything imaginary, but specific comments with specific information.
Highly relevant information.
I know what I am talking about, and on this subject I am knowledgeable.
If you want to find people tilting at windmills here…maybe look at the comments from people who have an emotional need to insist that anyone who disagrees with their view on these drugs, of course also has TDS.
Which is the exact opposite of true.
McGinley says:
“Pay attention!
See here:
‘Whereas hydroxychloroquine does appear to stop SARS-CoV-2 from infecting Vero cells, it fails to do the same for human lung cells in a dish.’ ”
Just one perhaps oh so slight problem with this study. The Calu-3 cell line used is a lung cancer cell line, not a normal lung cell line. That might make no difference at all or it might make all the difference in the world. Most certainly it should have been discussed as an important qualification. That it wasn’t even mentioned by the study authors or by McGinley is a huge red flag. I call foul. Stop trying to pull the wool over our eyes.
Yes, Doug we all know this and I am glad you brought it up.
At some point a naysayer seeks confirmation bias at all cost. Once we find the complete inability for objective thought on even basic facts, I need to bow out.
Clinging to a bad study is an example of self destructive behavior we sometimes see some humans.
Posting the same comment over and over again is annoying and insulting.
This is the definition of trolling.
You are free not to take it.
Good luck!
failed because they used TOO MUCH of it! Even though no one has ever shown a result that even IMPLIED that the drug’s effectiveness was inversely dose dependent…IOW that too much would not work
What utter and total bsh*t. “Too much of it” had nothing to do with it being inversely dose dependent , “too much of it” had to with the dose levels themselves being lethal. IOW they overdosed patients and then said look, it kills them. Well duh. There’s many other points in your diatribe that are similarly misleading. It is attacks like this by people like you that convince me that HCQ used properly has merit . Why else knowingly use it improperly and then claim it doesn’t work?
davidmhoffer:
Plus 1000.
At this point, I am simply amazed at how people can be so ignorant with their use of the language to deceive. Your points are well informed and spot on.
Who overdosed patients and killed them with it, David?
Specifically?
As for my comment being an “attack”, you sound like some sort of hypersensitive snowflake now.
What exactly makes my comment a “diatribe”?
I was not even addressing anyone specific.
“diatribe
[ˈdīəˌtrīb]
NOUN
a forceful and bitter verbal attack against someone or something.”
I did no such thing.
But you said something that is almost by definition utter and total BS: You gave no particulars, but said that “…attacks like this by people like you that convince me that HCQ used properly has merit.”
Really?
That is what you are going with?
That argument reminds me of one particularly loathesome one used by the antiracists…that denying one is a racist is proof of their racism.
You are stating that me, all by myself, and/or “people like me”, are how you decide things.
By automatically believing the opposite.
The whole world of medicine is lying, and your proof is you do not like me.
I can only pity anyone having to live inside a mind like that.
So, being that you are a clownishly illogical whining crybaby snowflake who has no facts but decides things based on your “feelings” about people you dislike, I can say with 100% certainty that I do not give one tiny rats ass what you think.
For someone who doesn’t give a tiny rats ass what I think, you wrote an awful lot of protest.
Methinks you doth protest too much….
Weak.
Very Weak.
Please…do better than that.
I may go from not caring to feeling sorry for you.
So please…have a heart.
**There is not one consistent argument for a benefit that holds any water, whatsoever.**
Unsubstantiated. Trolling.
So, we have a winner folks…Gerald gets the Pee Wee Herman award for the first one to use a variation on the “I know you are, but what am I” routine!
Take a bow…
You so funny!
You may disagree with every word I said, but I am not trolling, never have, and offer all the substantiation anyone asks for.
Always.
And you know it.
Got anything that moves the conversation forward in any way whatsoever, Gerald?
Something you need assistance comprehending, perhaps?
No shame in it…just say so.
Nicholas, you are known by your behavior. Yes you are trolling, you do it every time the subject of hcq comes up. it’s predictable and boring. You can pretend otherwise, but you are fooling no one except maybe yourself.
John: You are spot on. I will not engage with this person. The pattern of behavior when it gets frustrated is as follows.
First, it starts with Ad Hominem attacks.
Then, it invents things that were never said, pins those things onto others and then attacks those things.
The attacks I can take. The lies, and defamatory words, I will not tolerate.
I do not engage with this person, since it is a sink-hole of depravity.
See that last part?
That is trolling.
But only if you are not an actual moron, and I know it.
In your “Henry Ford paragraph” you inadvertently wrote “the the idea”. It’s near the end.
I saw that*!
And the sad fact is, it will stay like that, right here, for forever and a day!
Oh, the humanity!
*If only I learned to type the proper way, instead of looking at the keyboard while I do it, we might have avoided this calamity.
But I was too busy taking stuff like science and math classes for all those years.
I did spend some time drinking beer and playing Ultimate Frisbee, but as all can tell, the rest of my college years time was wasted!
John Endicott: Could not disagree more that McGinley is a troll. He does comment on HCQ posts, and I disagree with him (if I could refute him, I would, but it’s not my field- it’s obviously his field) but if you can’t see that he brings cites and valid, SCIENCE-BASED comments that should be appreciated at this site, I can’t help you see that calling him a troll is a waste of type strokes. Frankly, I wish HCQ would succeed, if only to make Gretchen Whitmer and the other dem govs look as stupid as possible. Then the press couldn’t overlook it without really trying.
Sounds like you are one of the people receiving some of that 21 billion the vaccine companies are handing out. I would be ashamed.
“Sounds like you are one of the people receiving some of that 21 billion the vaccine companies are handing out. I would be ashamed.”
I would be ashamed if I made stuff up inside my head and projected it onto someone else.
I would also be ashamed if I was actually against life saving medical research, and considered anyone involved in it to be a bad person.
Or if I expected educated people to work for free, or for people to give away things they manufactured because I am against capitalism.
Yup…those things would make me ashamed, Matthew.
BTW…what makes you think “vaccine companies” are “handing out” billions and billions of dollars?
For one thing, I never heard of a vaccine company, per se.
For another, most for-profit companies I am aware of try to make money, or at least break even.
Drug research is expensive, to be sure.
Volunteers need to be paid.
Are you actually saying that people who volunteer to be test subjects in new drug research, and receive some compensation for it, need to be ashamed of themselves?
Or is it the doctors and clinicians who need to be ashamed, in you view?
Whichever is the case, it is very bizarre to feel this way, IMO.
Do you work for free?
Does the work you do for which you get paid (assuming you have ever ben gainfully employed) involved helping sick people and saving lives?
If not, why are you not ashamed to be taking money for something which does not even involve helping any of the millions of people who are in need of care?
Pretty much everything you write about zinc is dead wrong. Zinc does work to inhibit virus replication allowing the immune system to defeat viruses including SARs. HCQ has been shown to increase zinc in cells but more more importantly in the right type of cells. People, especially elderly, can show normal zinc levels in the blood but be deficient where it counts. Read the work of Dr. Ananda Prasad. The use of HCQ as an ionosphere for zinc has been confirmed by South Koreans who have built upon Dr. Prasad’s research. I recently had the chance to discuss Dr. Prasad’s research with him. It is a randomized, double-blind study and will follow patients zinc levels in T-Cells and other cells over time (every three months) even after the virus is defeated. It is a long-term study. Given that he is 92 I just hope he can complete and publish the results. He has had tremendous success with his clinical treatment with HCQ and zinc but as you keep carping on you need the typical methods in order for adequate proof.
“HCQ has been shown to increase zinc in cells but more more importantly in the right type of cells”
You, I and many doctors and scientists agree with this. We know this, yet, there are people who distract by saying “No proof HCQ is an ionophore”
It’s cheap salesmen tricks to distract from what we know… The level of misapplied science is nauseating.
Thank you for your post!
Nicholas, you rely entirely too much on statistics and percentages. These numbers have a near 0 basis for making decisions. Counting the number of people who died with Covid in their blood by test versus people who didn’t test positive for it only gives the “grossest” estimate of what is going on. The problem is made worse by policies and incentives to assign Covid as the cause of death(died with Covid is listed as a Covid death). Trying to apply small percentage from broad surveys is a waste of time. While the statistics may show a significant R value that does not mean there is an effect when the desired effect is the patient walking out the door healthy again weeks ahead of schedule.
From what I have seen from actual practicing physicians is that it is absolutely critical that HCQ treatment as early as possible during the infection. The later treatment starts the less effective it appears to be. This seems to be even more important in older patients with other diseases. While no drug has been shown to be completely innocuous HCQ azithromycin and the other choices used are very low risk- comparable or lower than acetaminophen, which is used by tons everyday.
Random controlled trials were devised by he FDA to show that the drug being tested was at least not more dangerous than other treatments. The FDA also requires that the test drug shows at least as much positive response as the comparable treatments. This is difficult to do because the placebo effect can be very powerful. I take too many drugs for symptoms that are not a “yes or no”. Every RCT shows a placebo effect in the range of 30-50%. Antibiotics tend to show 70-90% positive effect. Others such as the biologicals, often barely show an effect. They are approved because they do help some people a lot while other peoples might as well get a normal saline infusion since they do nothing much. Unfortunately the drug companies expect patients to pay $6-50,000 per does to find out if it works on a particular patient.
It is not true that “every RCT shows a placebo effect of 30-50%”.
That is ridiculous.
Maybe if the drug is for some subjective condition like depression.
In fact it is common for placebo to outperform the study drug for such conditions.
And for infections which are commonly not fatal or chronic, simply waiting and giving supportive care will eventually result in clearing an infection.
Which is actually part of the point about determining if some drug is beneficial.
It does no good to observe that patient A got drug z and subsequently recovered.
But find me one RCT for Hepatitis C or AIDS drugs that showed any significant placebo effect.
You know…the kinds of conditions where the efficacy is determined by lab tests for viral RNA in the blood.
Besides for that, what exactly do you mean when you say I rely to much on statistics and percentages?
Looking at the big picture, rather than at one particular person, is the only way to say anything about how well a treatment works or does not work.
And it is not me relying on anything.
I am passing along information, explaining things.
And I do not think I spent any time talking about the numbers of people who tested one way or another.
I think you are projecting something inside your own head onto me…cause I never said anything about “Counting the number of people who died with Covid in their blood by test versus people who didn’t test positive for it only gives the “grossest” estimate of what is going on.”
As for all that after, “From what I have seen…”, I do not think you have seen anything. I think you have read about it, maybe talked to some people.
But I am pretty sure you are not someone working on this stuff.
Your inane statistical BS at the end of your comment proves you are speaking off the top of your head and do not really know what you are talking about.
One thing is for sure, if one is going to make factual or persuasive arguments about something , and you want to use statistics as part of your argument (even when it is not at the conclusion), you gotta make sure you have the numbers correct.
You started out by saying something incoherent about my relying on something I never said about statistics, and ended by making some fake statistics up that are wild exaggerations, in order to lend credence to what you said. Well, to someone like me, it does the opposite.
I will not look up how often antibiotics work against bacterial infections. I have not done so in many years, and may have actually never studied those stats, but I know you are wrong simply by being generally knowledgeable about subjects I speak about.
Looking it up now…antibiotics tend to show 70-90% positive effect…and I bet the number is closer to 95-100% except when bacteria have evolved resistance or the wrong antibiotic is used…but even strains like MERSA have some antibiotics that still work on them.
Antibiotics will not work against something that is not caused by a bacterial infection, and different drugs are effective only against certain organisms.
They will not work when someone is too far gone to help, because all most of them can do is stop bacterial reproduction…they mostly do not actually kill any bacteria. Our bodies have to do that, and some people are too far gone by the time they get medical treatment.
When properly prescribed, antibiotics work. When they do not work, there is a reason…the wrong one was given, or their was poor patient compliance, or the infection resulted from a resistant strain…or the infection was not bacterial.
I can think of one situation in which the success rate is in the 70-90% range: When treating antibiotic resistant staphylococcus aureus.
Yes, for the most intractable bacterial infections, doctors can only cure some of their patients…but it (antibiotic therapy) is even for this bug, MRSA, usually successful.
See here:
Comparative effectiveness of antibiotics for the treatment of MRSA complicated skin and soft tissue infections
Results: Out of 36 identified studies, 14 studies on six antibiotics with 28 treatment arms (n = 1840) were included in the analysis. No MRSA data in cSSTI were found for teicoplanin. The pooled success rate and CrI(95%) for each agent was: vancomycin (74.7%; CrI(95%): 64.1%-83.5%), dalbavancin (87.7%; CrI(95%): 74.6%-95.4%), linezolid (84.4%; CrI(95%): 76.6%-90.6%), telavancin (83.5%; CrI(95%): 73.6%-90.8%), daptomycin (78.1%; CrI(95%): 54.6%-93.2%) and tigecycline (70.4%; CrI(95%): 48.0%-87.6%). Comparisons between antibiotics suggested differences versus vancomycin for linezolid (+9.7%; CrI(95%): 4.4%-15.8%), dalbavancin (+13.1%; CrI(95%): 1.0%-23.8%), and telavancin (+8.8%; CrI(95%): 1.5-16.7%). The finding of lower vancomycin efficacy in MRSA cSSTI did not change in sensitivity analyses.”
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/29136035/
Consider another statistic.
Every year in the US, something like 250,000 patients are hospitalized due to infection with Clostridium difficile, one of the hardest infections to treat.
But in spite of that, and despite antibiotic resistance becoming an ever more ominous threat, “only” about 14,000 of those 250,000 wind up dying instead of walking out the door of the hospital. Less than 10%.
For the routine infections that comprise the majority of cases of antibiotic usage, they are virtually always effective.
Well, you don’t have to take the HCQ/AZ/Z protocol…since you are not satisfied with any proofs. And, if you are surrounded by flood waters, and a helicopter comes to save you, wave them off since there is not enough proof you can be retrieved safely.
This logic has been used by humans for years. And your example is perfect.
Then in the medical industry, which has been taken over by politics, a very costly method was invented as the zero tolerance gold standard. This allowed the perversion of the language to prevent common sense from ever being used again.
Do not drink water even if you’re thirsty because, until we have not completed a double blind study, followed by articles of people dying of water intoxication.
EVERYONE IGNORE THE FACT that a Third World country like India, with 3x the population of the USA has only 1/3 as many deaths. This has NOTHING to do with India being the #1 producer and consumer of HCQ. Nothing to see here, folks, move along…
“The Indian Council for Medical Research has approved Hydroxy-Chloroquine as an effective drug in combating coronavirus. The recommendation is for prophylaxis (preventive treatment) of asymptomatic healthcare workers and contacts.”
If you are irrationally, hysterically and/or religiously opposed to HCQ, then please, I beg you, do NOT read this article: https://www.lifesitenews.com/opinion/this-indian-slum-contained-a-possible-covid-19-disaster-with-hydroxychloroquine
Matthew, you are not comparing like with like.
i) The epidemic in India started much later. It only reached 2000 daily Covid infections in early May and it has yet to peak.
ii) The median age in India is less than 27. In the US it is over 38 (i.e. 50% higher). In India 65% are under 35, and so are at very low risk anyway, with or without HCQ.
Those seem like good counterpoints, but India has nearly twice as many citizens 65+ of age than the US does (>82 million vs. <42 million).
So, that's 40 million more elderly people in India, with access to a less excellent healthcare system than found in the US, yet roughly 100,000 fewer deaths.
Thanks for playing, Slarty! Please stop by the desk on the way out to pick up your consolation prize.
Matthew (Re: your comment below)
As I pointed out in point (i) above: “The epidemic in India started much later [than in the USA]… and it has yet to peak.”
So far India has only had half the cases that the US has had so you would expect less than half the deaths.
In addition, India has barely 16% of its population who are over 50, (190m), the USA has 32% (110m). So again, you would actually expect the number of deaths in India per 1000 cases to be less than half those in the US.
In combination these two factors mean that you would actually expect the number of deaths in India to date to be less than a quarter of those in the US. In fact they are nearly a third. So they are 33% higher than would be expected. That is not a good advert for HCQ.
Slarty actually wrote, “So far India has only had half the cases that the US has had so you would expect less than half the deaths.”
Umm, that’s my point – India has had, not “only half”, but well over half as many cases as the US – 300,000 more than half. Yet they only have 1/3 the deaths, not half. Therefore, FORTY THOUSAND people are still alive in a 3rd world country that would’ve died in America.
Thank you for helping me make my point. It’s random acts of kindness like yours that give me hope!
Re. Matthew
I also wrote: “In addition, India has barely 16% of its population who are over 50, (190m), the USA has 32% (110m). So again, you would actually expect the number of deaths in India per 1000 cases to be less than half those in the US.”
There are 5.8m cases in the USA and 3.3m in India. The USA has 177,332 deaths, so proportionately, you would expect (177332 x 3.3 ÷ 5.8) ÷2 = 50448 deaths in India so far. The factor of 2 reduction is because India has PROPORTIONATELY less than half as many over-50s as the USA. And generally only the over-50s are at risk of dying from Covid.
But India actually has 60472 deaths. That is 20% more than it should have if it was doing as well as the USA. India is not doing well and so HCQ clearly isn’t working.
Yep, copper handrails, copper door knobs, copper filters, copper piping, copper utensils, copper pots and pans all kill viruses, often in just a few minutes
I have been screaming about India since the beginning of all the places in the world it seems like the most vulnerable and yet has been reasonable subdued. It has probably the weirdest combination of 1st world and 3rd world social conditions anywhere. A great place to study.
I cant stress enough the importance of vitamin D as well as HCQ+zinc.
New Jersey HCQ study (zinc not part of study):
“In a 1067 patient propensity matched cohort, 21.6% with outpatient exposure to hydroxychloroquine were hospitalized, and 31.4% without exposure were hospitalized.”
“Conclusions: In this retrospective observational study of SARS-CoV-2 infected non-hospitalized patients hydroxychloroquine exposure was associated with a decreased rate of subsequent hospitalization. Additional exploration of hydroxychloroquine in this mildly symptomatic outpatient population is warranted.”
This study may go the way of the Lancet study that was pulled because of lack of peer review. We’ll see.
https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.08.20.20178772v1
“Hydroxychloroquine will pull available Zinc into the cell.” How? Are there any chemical experiments showing that hydroxychloroquine binds to zinc? That would not be difficult to show, if it were true.
I think this actually goes one step further. For example, if a more potent Zn-binder is added (EDTA) Zn does not get into the cells. Plus more circumstantial evidence:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4182877/
“To be certain that chloroquine does not mobilize zinc ions from intracellular zinc binding molecules, we pretreated the cells with Ca-EDTA, a cell membrane impermeable metal chelator, prior to the addition of chloroquine. As shown in Figure 3A, in the presence of Ca-EDTA chloroquine did not enhance intracellular zinc signaling, further supporting the conclusion that chloroquine is a zinc ionophore.”
Having a chemistry/enzymology-based binding constant would be good, but translating that over to a biological assay would be difficult given all the moving parts of a biological system.
Also, interestingly, and it may have been posted here already, but in the 3,737 patient retrospective study by the Raoult lab in Marseille, low zinc concentrations led to a worse outcome.
Yes, and once again, a reference to HCQ was answered with a link to research on HCQ.
Also, note the reason for the research on the ionophore effect:
“Chloroquine is an established antimalarial agent that has been recently tested in clinical trials for its anticancer activity. The favorable effect of chloroquine appears to be due to its ability to sensitize cancerous cells to chemotherapy, radiation therapy, and induce apoptosis.”
BTW…the clinical trials using CQ vs cancer also all failed to show any benefit.
There were lots of them.
Plenty of time and money wasted long before this virus was a thing.
Keep in mind that research is an industry.
A far bigger one than drugs for human diseases.
The US federal government alone spends hundreds of billions on all sorts of research.
HCQ is not CQ, and even if it is also a zinc ionophore, no one has ever shown this effect to be useful in treating viral infections in animals or people…ever!
Here is a paper out of China, who seem to have started all of this with a report from a small number of patients, but who have long since concluded HCQ and CQ are worthless against covid 19. The preamble of this study point out this failure:
“Hydroxychloroquine-mediated inhibition of SARS-CoV-2 entry is attenuated by TMPRSS2”
https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.07.22.216150v1
See here:
“Hydroxychloroquine, used to treat malaria and some autoimmune disorders, potently inhibits viral infection of SARS coronavirus (SARS-CoV-1) and SARS-CoV-2 in cell-culture studies. However, human clinical trials of hydroxychloroquine failed to establish its usefulness as treatment for COVID-19. This compound is known to interfere with endosomal acidification necessary to the proteolytic activity of cathepsins. Following receptor binding and endocytosis, cathepsin L can cleave the SARS-CoV-1 and SARS-CoV-2 spike (S) proteins, thereby activating membrane fusion for cell entry. ”
Nothing about zinc or ionophores.
But what do they know…they are scientists who study viruses for real.
Anyhow, their conclusion is that,
“Chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine have been shown to prevent viral infection in cell-culture systems, but human clinical trials did not observe a significant improvement in COVID-19 patients treated with these compounds. Here we show that hydroxychloroquine interferes with only one of two somewhat redundant pathways by which the SARS-CoV-2 spike (S) protein is activated to mediate infection. ”
“Thus TMPRSS2 expression on physiologically relevant SARS-CoV-2 target cells may bypass the antiviral activities of hydroxychloroquine, and explain its lack of in vivo efficacy.”
-Human clinical trials did not observe a significant improvement in COVID-19 patients treated with these compounds.
-(P)hysiologically relevant SARS-CoV-2 target cells may bypass the antiviral activities of hydroxychloroquine, and explain its lack of in vivo efficacy.
What could be more clear.
Is every country in the world pretending something that works, does not work, because of US politics?
“Yes, and once again, a reference to HCQ was answered with a link to research on HCQ.”
Should have read:
“Yes, and once again, a reference to HCQ was answered with a link to research on CQ.”
Mr McGinley
Three comments
1) something about HCQ drives you over the edge, you post irrationally, even if the wordes sound rational, what is it?
2) Most countries outside the anglo sphere utilise HCQ plus zinc as an early remedy for covid-19 with apparently good results. Something works, even if its all in the mind.
3) Your argument about covid-19 deaths being almost entirely of elderly people with comorbidities is correct. Consequently are you as animated against using any new relatively untested drug and/or vaccine as you are against HCQ plus zinc? If so please indicate where you are expressing these views, and if not, why not?
“Is every country in the world pretending something that works, does not work, because of US politics?”
Yep, orangemanbad is globally pervasive if you’re a globalist or a fake-globalist gobsh!te or even a dumb@ss who doesn’t know anything about anything, let alone the globalist dream/ nightmare, which can never happen now without shutting down the internet (good luck with that).
HCQ and CQ are zinc ionophores. Live with it. A chemistry course might help.
“is every country in the world pretending something that works”… yes, the effectiveness of lockdowns and masks in most first-world countries is certainly pretent…. and yes, it’s all about politics (power and $$$). nicholas is right on both fronts.
Exactly. The molecular biology is explained in detail in this following video on the Medcram channel on Youtube (run by a doctor)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U7F1cnWup9M&
Zinc is the active ingredient and MUST be used.
Hydroxychloroquine allows the zinc to penetrate the cell wall.
Azithromycin is used to counter any secondary infections.
Using correct doses of all three produces very good results as an early therapeutic and can also be used as a prophylactic to prevent infection of any RNA virus. However common use of these cheap drugs would not only work against covid-19 but also influenza and coronavirus based ‘common colds’, absolutely destroying revenue streams for pharmaceutical companies that alleviate symptoms rather than prevent infection. The basis for (insecure) mail-in voting in the upcoming US Presidential Election would also disappear overnight. Which may be why the incumbent mentioned it and his opponents work to discredit it with studies with wrong (near lethal) dosages and studies that miss out zinc.
One wonders about COVID-19 incidence among lupus and rheumatoid arthritis sufferers who take HCQ daily.
And zinc is listed prominently as a supplement recommended for lupus patients.
Carlie
I few seconds with your favorite search engine, and voila!
https://www.lupus.org/indiana/covid19-the-latest-0
“One wonders about COVID-19 incidence among lupus and rheumatoid arthritis sufferers who take HCQ daily.”
Good question.
Much has been written of a speculative or dubious nature…but now there are some studies of a more concrete nature.
I have a few of them right here in my long list of studies.
Here are two:
Hydroxychloroquin ineffective for COVID-19
prophylaxis in lupus and rheumatoid arthritis
https://ard.bmj.com/content/annrheumdis/early/2020/08/05/annrheumdis-2020-218500.full.pdf
From the study:
“HCQ was not associated with COVID-19 prevention. A
strength of this study is all patients were on an immunosuppressant, with similar high-risk status for COVID-19 regardless of
HCQ use. ”
Characteristics associated with hospitalisation for
COVID-19 in people with rheumatic disease: data
from the COVID-19 Global Rheumatology Alliance
physician-reported registry
https://ard.bmj.com/content/annrheumdis/79/7/859.full.pdf
From this study:
” We found no significant association between antimalarial therapy and hospitalisation (OR=0.94, 95%CI 0.57 to 1.57; p=0.82) after adjusting…”
The phrase “no significant association” in this context means there was no benefit seen, IOW in those taking one of the antimalarials, there was no association with a positive outcome.
But there were some drugs that did show some benefit (and/or harm).
You spoke too soon. Look at the HCQ munching nation of Uganda. I thought blacks were supposed to have trouble with this virus, but not when they are on HCQ.
Study from Portugal shows persons using HCQ for another condition were protected from coronavirus. Chronic treatment with hydroxychloroquine and SARS-CoV-2 infection.
https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.06.26.20056507v1.full.pdf
By analyzing the Portuguese anonymized data on private and public based medical prescriptions we have identified all cases chronically receiving HCQ for the management of diseases such as systemic lupus erythematosus, rheumatoid arthritis, and other autoimmune diseases. Additionally, we have detected all laboratory confirmed cases of SARS-CoV-2 infection and all laboratory confirmed negative cases in the Portuguese population (mandatorily registered in a centrally managed database). Cross linking the two sets of data has allowed us to compare the proportion of HCQ chronic treatment (at least 2 grams per month) in laboratory confirmed cases of SARS-CoV-2 infection with laboratory confirmed negative cases.
Results: Out of 26,815 SARS-CoV-2 positive patients, 77 (0.29%) were chronically treated with HCQ, while 1,215 (0.36%) out of 333,489 negative patients were receiving it chronically (P=0.04). After adjustment for age, sex, and chronic treatment with corticosteroids and/or immunosuppressants, the odds ratio of SARS-CoV-2 infection for chronic treatment with HCQ has been 0.51 (0.37-0.70).
Conclusions: Our data suggest that chronic treatment with HCQ confers protection against SARS-CoV-2 infection.
Ron, the problem with this kind of study is that with 98% recovery rates, the efficacy if prophylactic treatments is very difficult to verify. You could prove to yourself by playing with numbers that people whose name begins with a “B” have 100% recovery rates, thereby convincing some people that a name change will save their life…..On the other hand, if only those whose name starts with a “B” dies, you are onto something that will interest the local police department.
But with a disease with an estimated CFR of about 0.4%, that’s always going to be the case.
It’s important to remember that most lupus and RA patients are also taking immunosuppressants. The best study to determine prophylaxis effect will be on front line healthcare workers, can anyone find a study that has looked at that?
The bigger problem is with the fact that people that take HCQ are using it to treat lupus or RA or one of the other rheumatic diseases.
These people are especially vulnerable to infections, and they know it darn well.
The drug itself is an immune system modulator…it dials down part of the immune system.
IOW…these are people who are immunocompromised, and have for many years, their entire life in some cases, known they need to be careful about infections, and they know how to be.
Many are on other immunomodulators.
Many are on steroids, powerful ones, and/or various monoclonal antibody immunoregulatory drugs.
The studies I linked to discuss this, and look at the particulars, and also compare apples to apples, not something else like the one out of Portugal:
This study from Portugal did not show an effect, it looked at data to draw a conclusion based on statistics, but did not properly account for variables, or even for known confounders.
It reminds me of studies that show that people who use artificial sweeteners and drink diet soda tend to be fetter, and concluded that it was the calorie-free sweetener making people fat…instead of the obvious conclusion that fat people have an obvious reason to reduce caloric input by choosing artificial sweetener over sugar.
The points about people with rheumatic disease may be less obvious, but are well known enough to be common knowledge among anyone who has ever had an autoimmune condition, or who has spent much time reading about this subject.
No need to take my word for it…lets see what the people who have these conditions and have for many years taken these drugs (HCQ and perhaps sometimes, but mostly HCQ) think, eh?
There are many organizations and support groups, and all contain a big prominent reference like this:
“If I am already on hydroxychloroquine, am I not as high risk for contracting the coronavirus?
Answer: According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention individuals with serious underlying health conditions are at risk of getting very sick from the coronavirus.
There is no evidence that taking hydroxychloroquine is effective in preventing a person from contracting the coronavirus. ”
Or this:
“Can the use of hydroxychloroquine prevent coronavirus (COVID-19)?
Answer: No. There is no evidence that taking hydroxychloroquine is effective in preventing a person from contracting the coronavirus or developing COVID-19, so people who are not already taking this medication do not need to start it now. ”
https://www.lupus.org/resources/hydroxychloroquine-plaquenil-coronavirus-covid19-questions-answers
I can see how someone might discount info from a Lupus support group website.
Here is some more info from Mayo clinic, specifically about why people with diseases like lupus and RA, IOW those people who are on long term HCQ therapy before this started, are more careful about infections:
“Having lupus also increases your risk of:
Infection. People with lupus are more vulnerable to infection because both the disease and its treatments can weaken the immune system.”
https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/lupus/symptoms-causes/syc-20365789
In case anyone thinks I am just making stuff up.
I’ll leave that to people dreaming up reasons for ignoring a huge mountain of evidence.
Surveys?
What the hell…it worked for Family Feud, right?
Richard Dawson called…he wants his scientific method back.
Surveys, models, proxies, inference, assertions, assumptions… especially models.
I’m pleased to see some light shining through the fog that’s been deliberately used to confuse the possible efficacy of Hydroxychloroquine and deny access to a cheap, relatively safe drug.
It may not be the magic bullet but it seems likely it would have saved many lives if the establishment hadn’t suffered from Trump Derangement Syndrome. If that does indeed turn out to be the case, the MSM and the hysteria generated by them around this drug will have been responsible for the deaths of many, many people.
I think if used correctly, as we have known for a decade or more (with Zn to reduce RNA replication in Alveolar cells) it is in fact a metaphorical magic bullet. Nothing comes closer, period.
mario
I’ve yet to see anyone ask if zinc used alone might be as effective as the ‘cocktail.’ Any time one is performing an experiment, it is necessary to reduce the number of variables to as small a number as possible (preferably 1), to remove confounding influences. Otherwise, the situation becomes one of, “Here, try this. There might be something in it that will work!”
Clyde: I hoped to imply that “HCQ” with Zn… point taken.
@Clyde
I’ve been asking this question for a while now though there is not really a clinical trial addressing it.
Only study I could find so far investigated the combination HCQ+Azi vs. HCQ+Azi+Zn where +Zn had an effect but without not as much. So we still not know.
Zn on its own has beneficial effects on the immune system and endothelial cells so it’s worth to further investigate it.
https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fimmu.2020.01736/full
https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fimmu.2020.01712/full
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6628855/
Most interestingly zinc seems to have a modulatory role in interferon activity and oxidative stress.
Dr Thomas Borody, who developed the cure for peptic ulcers, likes HCQ, but thinks ivermectin is better.
Great interview with him here:
Ivermectin + Doxycycline + Zinc
Professor Thomas Borody developer of the triple therapy cure for peptic ulcers in 1987.
“It’s easier than treating the flu now”. “You can actually eradicate it”. “We know it’s curable”
http://covexit.com/we-know-its-curable-its-easier-than-treating-the-flu-professor-thomas-borody/
The flu is mostly not “treated”, but allowed to run it’s course.
No one I know even bothers to see a doctor for the flu, let alone try to treat it.
Mainly because there is no actual treatment worth a darn, and because…who feels like getting up and going to see a doctor when one has the flu…which everyone knows just has to be suffered through.
Last year (USA)….
34,000 flu deaths.
500,000 hospitalizations.
I, also, didn’t know any of them. But I am not so arrogant that I think they don’t exist.
The 500,000 that went to the hospital … not treated? Just hung around eating jello for a few days?
(Did you know that zinc is the most abundant element in the human body … how the heck can anybody be zinc deficient when they have more zinc than anything else … I mean, um, what I intended to mean to say is that zinc is used more than anything else … I mean, like read all the words I string together to make my point … I forgot my point … but I’m pretty sure, no, I’m positive my point is accurate and correct … look at all the stuff I know about and then question my point if you want to, but I’m pretty sure I have a point.)
DonM, do you really want me to go back and show everyone where you totally misquoted me and took one mis-stated sentence out of context?
What do you ever contribute of a factual nature, or regarding explication of something no one else is saying?
I think the answer is never…so you never have to worry about saying something incorrect ever…because you never say anything.
Just talk a lot.
My points are that:
1) there is treatment for flu
2) half a million people were treated last year
3) you make shit up
4) you are wrong a lot
5) when someone points out your errors you deflect rather than engage; as mocking you is more fulfilling (than engaging). You should change your name to Frank Gallagher … more apt.
And yes, show how I have taken you BS out of context … don’t deflect … just do it.
plus 1
“…who developed the cure for peptic ulcers…”
This is not exactly true, and is at best misleading.
He invented the first triple therapy, but it was already known that eliminating H. pylori would allow a peptic ulcer to heal, and symptoms of gastritis to resolve.
We generally do not refer to antibiotics as “the cure” for the diseases caused by the bacteria that the antibiotics can treat.
Several reasons for this, including that antibiotics do not actually kill bacteria, they do not always work and must be taken in a certain way for a certain amount of time at at a certain dose to be effective, and also because other antibiotics almost always exist which would also treat the infection.
It may seem like splitting hairs, but it is not, not really.
For one thing, Robin Warren and Barry Marshall had already shown that antibiotics were an effective treatment a few years prior.
I was treated and “cured”, but not by that particular triple therapy. I took metronidazole and amoxicillin. My symptoms went away within a couple of days…although I was sure to finish the courses of the antibiotics (or instead of curing it, I might have made my infection more resistant).
And a little known fact is that in the early 1950’s, hospitals in New York City were successfully treating people with ulcers with penicillin. This knowledge was somehow lost in subsequent years…possible due to rapidly evolving resistance to that particular monotherapy, or maybe it did not work for everyone. But a 1954 paper which looked at over 1000 biopsies did not find any bacteria in the stomachs of people with ulcers. H. pylori is known to be hard to culture. But the fact is, the bacteria had been found in the stomach all the way back in 1875…but that knowledge was also somehow lost/forgotten to science. Likely because the doctors who found it in 1875 could not culture it. Amazing what people will ignore when something is hard to learn about.
It may have been “known,” but not to most treating physicians.
In the early 90s, I watched a room full of doctors at a medical conference nearly lynch another doctor for bringing it up. It was still somewhat controversial among most parts of the field until Dr. Marshall started winning awards for his work in the mid 1990s.
Which is why what people say, no matter who they are, is not evidence…it is anecdotes.
Right… They gave out that 2005 Nobel Prize because of anecdotes… NOT “for their discovery of the bacterium Helicobacter pylori and its role in gastritis and peptic ulcer disease”. Here I was, listening to the Nobel Prize Committee when I should’ve been paying attention to some random guy on the internet blathering about it!
For the composition of the human body, the first 4 elements in decreasing order:
In terms of mass:
Oxygen
Carbon
Hydrogen
Nitrogen
In terms of number atoms:
Hydrogen
Oxygen
Carbon
Nitrogen
That’s it: inexpensive, well-establish low risk profile, in vitro affirmative action, and positive results to reduce excess deaths reported from hospitals, clinics, and practitioners around the globe. No models. It is a leading candidate in a risk management protocol.
Yes agreed.
However, I will remind everyone of an idea by Hippocrates, “Let thy Food be thy medicine.”
Good health starts at the mouth. Six pack abdominal muscles are created in the kitchen not the gym. Eating clean and nutritionally will do more for you than so-called modern medicine. Nature/Evolution has seen fit to provide us naturally occurring ionophores and foods with zinc.
The only science more effe-ed up then climate science is nutritional science. I not longer talk to people about nutrition; it is a belief system to that person. You should just go ahead and assume everything you know about it is wrong.
Please do not wait for an “expert” to tell you to put your safety helmet on. A). By time they do it will be too late and B). the wrong helmet. aka Murphy’s Laws of Combat, 82nd Airborne reporting for duty.
It was “experts” that got us into this mess.
It’s a gaggle of geese, a pride of lions, and a plague of experts.
Phil,
there’s a lot more fog for you in these dozens of studies
https://c19study.com/
The C19Study.com site lists 79 studies. It links to and summarizes data from HCQTrial.com
All early and prophylactic use show positive results.
59% of late use are still positive.
https://C19Study.com
https://HCQTrial.com
Except in the case of Climate Science where a majority of papers do in fact “Regurgitate” prior papers, many multiple party (et al) papers written by the same handful of researchers
What does the survey tell me, beside the idea that HCQ wasn’t prescribed very often, at least less often than maybe necessary ?
Good for you for realizing a survey can not tell anyone a darn thing, except how people answered a survey.
It cannot even tell us anything about the people who ripped it up and threw it in the trash (or hung up the phone) instead of responding.
The survey is for the doctors treating covid, not the general public. There is no better real source.
Not without an personal affront…..
Won’t accept your words as answer.
You de-legimize this website by repeating this nonsense
+1 Rick
Please be more specific. Please quote the part in his article do you take offence to and tell us why you feel it’s in error?
PS. Your “Mosher-esque” style is very weak.
Are you kidding Rick? Around 80% of the articles posted here are nonsense and posted to be criticized. If in your opinion this is one such article, then give specific criticisms.
I’ll admit that the idea of using SurveyMonkey to figure out a correlation between % of patients who received HCQ therapy and mortality rate by region, seems a stretch.
My question is, why do you make this comment? Because you’re convinced that HCQ doesn’t work, or because you’re convinced that the survey methodology is irredeemably flawed? (I suppose you’re going to either ignore my question or give me a monosallablic response like “both”. Do ignore the question, if you’re too lazy to elaborate on your reasons. And in that case, I am sure most here will also ignore your comment.
Eureka? The Guardian? With model, survey, assertion, consensus affirmations, and multi-decadal and even century lead times, if ever.
Your de-legimize is non cents.
As in worthless? LOL. If that’s what you meant then good one.
Nonsense / Non Cents
Nice play on words.
And you are passionately in favor of the legitimacy of this web site being promoted and protected! Or something.
Also, especially when you write such a terse comment, you ought to proofread it. Writing “de-legimize” [sic] might lead readers to think your comment is, what would be a good adjective… nonsense!
Leo
There is a conundrum presented that is begging to be addressed. You said, “From January to August 16, 13.5% of COVID-19 patients ages 40+ were prescribed Hydroxychloroquine in the US.” You also said, “In one survey, published on April 8, 60%-70% of physicians reported that they would take HCQ and give it to family members on symptoms of COVID-19.” Why do you suppose the percentage of doctors who said they would prescribe HCQS is 5X the percentage actually prescribed?
Polls are notoriously untrustworthy. Just ask Hillary. They are easily influenced by how the question(s) is/are asked, and whether those polled might be embarrassed by giving an honest answer.
So, given the stigma associated with this treatment protocol, the positive outcomes and presumptive usage are higher than reported, and the reduction in excess deaths is underestimated.
Or maybe the reduction in excess deaths (if there is one in the study) disappears, because those who saw no reduction were ashamed to admit that they had tried hydroxychloroquine, or they didn’t feel like answering.
Doctors can also be notoriously fickle. They’ll all jump on the newest treatment trend (or at least consider it), but then reverse course immediately when someone suggests that it might not work, and could expose them to liability.
I would like to see a poll of those same doctors that is taken now.
Or even last month.
Back in April, all anyone knew was that a lot of people were dying and there was no proven effective treatment.
No one knew what might work, or had much reason or way to know what did not.
Neither of those is true anymore.
Besides for all of that…am I the only one who finds it richly ironic that WUWT, or all places, seems to be giving credence to the idea we can ascertain the truth Of a proposition by ASKING FOR A SHOW OF HANDS?
This is where knowledgeable people have been debunking the idea that such a method has any value whatsoever re whether something is true is not.
Even when the people being asked are “experts”, let alone the general public.
For anyone who is not aware of it…this is how politics is decided, not science.
Not facts.
Not what is objectively true.
We have a method for that, and voting is no part of it.
Consensus science a la catastrophic anthropogenic global cooling… warming… change? The so-called “greenhouse”, that’s not a greenhouse, effect of CO2, characterized in the laboratory then inferred and applied to the wild in global proportions, where efficacy was proven through surveys, models. and beliefs? We’re not talking about decades, and centuries to test a hypothesis, but hours and days to provided an early, low risk treatment to mitigate a high risk disease progression. The reports from medical facilities around the world have been positive.
“The reports from medical facilities around the world have been positive.”
If you had started with the word “Some” instead of “The”, your statement would have been correct, but meaninglessly incomplete in any case.
Some “reports” have been positive, and others have not.
But reports in and of themselves are not evidence, not as considered to be so by the scientific method.
“Reports” are what are called “anecdotal”.
Someone saying something carries little in the way of objective evidentiary weight.
There are many doctors in many hospitals all over the world who spent weeks and months treating nearly everyone with HCQ or CQ initially. I know of zero hospital systems, ICU doctors, or medical protocols that are still using it or recommending it’s usage, outside of clinical trials. And just this weekend, have been increasing calls to stop using it in clinical trials either.
There has been far more than enough time and way more than a sufficient number treated to know if it has value or not.
Many commenters here have conceded long since that by the time someone is in the hospital, it is “too late” for it to work.
In fact there is no objective evidence using the gold standard for drug therapy for infectious disease treatment, the prospective double blind placebo controlled clinical trial (which has been shown for many decades and thousands of ailments and millions of patients and uncountable numbers of drugs, to be the best way to say if something has value or not), that demonstrates efficacy…which is why we are even having this conversation.
Doctors in the ICUs and ERs of busy hospitals that have been clogged with COVID patients for half a year, have long since gone on record as stating it has been tried and shown not to work.
I posted links to article in which such doctors were interviewed, all the way back in May and April, saying as much.
Just google the phrase “Doctor says hydroxychloroquine is ineffective” and you can spend the rest of your life reading all the articles from doctors who have dismissed it.
But…if you never read anything except from people that believe it definitely works…I have no doubt you can forget that anyone ever said it.
**Just google the phrase “Doctor says hydroxychloroquine is ineffective” and you can spend the rest of your life reading all the articles from doctors who have dismissed it.**
Likely used it inappropriately. No doctors quoted.
There is a whole world to save…whatcha waiting for?
Nicholas
Yes, it is definitely an Alice in Wonderland moment, where people who routinely give griff and his ilk a load of crap, sound just like him on the topic of HCQS! Even assuming for the sake of argument that HCQS has efficacy, how do we know that it is better than any of the other roughly three-dozen drugs that have shown clinical potential? If every physician were to take the advice of the proponents here, we might not pursue the other potential drugs, and in the long run more people would die if there is a better treatment than HCQS. We need to be certain of the best available treatment before endorsing one over all the potential ones.
In response to: “how do we know that it is better than any of the other roughly three-dozen drugs that have shown clinical potential?”
Who cares? Why does it have to be better than some other hypothetical and costly drug?
HCQ is cheap, it works, has an extensive track record of safety…
Your denigration of people who can comprehend things well enough and rhetorical question offer nothing of value.
“how do we know that it is better than any of the other roughly three-dozen drugs that have shown clinical potential?”
We don’t, but if something works, it works.
Mario and Icisil
It all depends on your definition of “works.” Unlike my car, which starts reliably 9,999 times sequentially, not everyone who receives HCQS recovers. It seems to work for most, with varying rates of recovery. Therefore, there is room for improvement. It seems that your standard is “good enough for government work.”
Based on the 4:1 death rate of non-HCQ nations vs. HCQ nations it appears it (HCQ) does work better than anything else (utilized to date).
There is, of course, no consistent control in the data that was used to get the (approximate) 4:1 results. So, ‘your results may vary’. But not likely so much that there is anything better at this point in time.
And there is no way to do what you suggest … “be certain of the best available treatment before endorsing one over all the potential ones”. Nobody is endorsing HCQ and “saying stop all else”. Nobody is saying cease the vaccine trials.
But there are those saying “Stop/restrict HCQ” … why? ORANGEMANBAD? Contrary investments? Political benefit? Attention seeking Gallagherism? Why?
Clyde and Nicholas,
Would you guys please do just a little research instead of blathering on!
Look at the fatality rates for most African countries, where HCQ is often given out like candy for malaria. Nigeria has one hundredth the fatality rate of the US; is that because of it’s advanced health care system?
The data presented in Steven Hatfill’s article might be interesting to you even though he is only a virologist. The data from Switzerland is particularly fascinating. When the WHO recommended against using HCQ the Swiss CFR was running about 3%; they stopped using it and about twelve days later, voila, the rate jumped up to the 10-15% range! Then 12 or 13 days after the use of HCQ was resumed the rate dropped back to about 3%. Maybe you can explain what the cause of those changes are better than Hatfill; after all he’s only a virologist!
One last note, most of the studies claiming HCQ is ineffective do NOT use it per the recommendations; early in the infection with zinc and an antibiotic. And if ivermectin is more efficacious, great! We should be treating the sick with anything shown to work; not killing them in job lots like the governors of NY, NJ and Michigan!
don’t expect a reply from nicholas… he states that large hospital ICU and ER beds are loaded with covid patients and that the hospitals say HCQ is not working… why would it? from what I read, HCQ with zinc works best as a preventative or early onset conditions of covid… if you’re going to ER, but especially ICU, it’s likely past the point where HCQ and zinc can help in any meaningful way so why would u expect hospitals to say it works for treating covid at that point?
AM
Do a little research? I don’t see anyone here that has done as much research and presented ‘facts’ of the quality that Nicholas routinely provides. Where is your research and citations?
The opening insult was unwarranted. You said, “Look at the fatality rates for most African countries, …” This is what I mean about a ‘griff moment.’ That is at best, a correlation, not proof. There are countries in the world that have not had a single case of COVID-19, and nobody really knows why. Not that I do any personal research, but I asked a friend from Rwanda who survived the genocide if she thought that the widespread use of HCQS was contributing to the low rates in Africa. Her response was that she felt that Africans have a stronger immune system than in the developed world because only the strongest survive childhood and their immune systems are constantly being challenged in an unhygienic environment with lots of diseases.
There is no officially recommended regimen of HCQS treatment. A handful of doctors tried a sub-toxic dose of an anti-malarial drug, tossed in some zinc for its heavy-metal toxicity to organisms, and added an antibiotic just in case a secondary opportunistic bacterial infection developed in all the fluids in the lung. A pragmatic trial, but not exactly the sort of gold standard where any of them could tell you what the optimum dose or length of time of treatment should be because there was no variation to optimize. They early-on settled on what seemed to work. That is not what I would call good medicine. It is one step above casting spells by a witch doctor.
Why would doctors take it and give it to family members and not prescribe it for patients? Try fear of liability. With the FDA pulling it, and widespread reports claiming side effect issues, doctors would have pulled back quickly. It takes serious courage to buck the system, just ask ‘America’s Frontline Doctors’ what they faced.
Because their family members hadn’t been infected? Because their state or county disallowed the prescription?
I mean, that’s just a couple of reasons off the top of my head Clyde. Not sure your point is well made here. Especially the part about being embarrassed. If anything, it’s become anathema to speak about prescribing HCQ, much less doing it – you’ll get yourself harangued in the media if you do, perhaps your medical license questioned, thus your Argument to Embarrassment seems to contradict itself.
“LOCKDOWN will come to be seen as a “monumental mistake on a global scale” and must never happen again, a scientist who advises the Government on infectious diseases says.
Mark Woolhouse said lockdown was a “panic measure” but admitted it was the only option at the time because “we couldn’t think of anything better to do”.
There was no need to do anything –
“1918 – Spanish Flu – 50 million dead
1918 – World Population – 950 million (est)
1918 – 5.26% world’ population died!
Experts say – TRAGIC EVENT!
2018 – Seasonal Flu – 650,000 dead
2018 – World Population – 7.5 billion (est)
2018 – 0.009% world’s population died!
Experts say – TYPICAL YEAR
2020 – COVID 19 – 488,729 dead and counting
2020 – World Population – 7.7 billion (est)
2020 – 0.006% world’s population has died.
Experts say – THE WORLD IS COMING TO AN END, SHUT DOWN ALL BUSINESS, CLOSE THE CHURCHES, RUIN THE WORLD’S ECONOMY!!!
FACT: 1% of the World’s Population right now would be 77 million dead.
Now, if 5.26% is TRAGIC and 0.009% is No Big Deal.. Then WTF are we doing with only 0.006%?”
All Lives Matter. That said, there is no scientific evidence that mitigation strategies (e.g. masks, physical distancing) have reduced excess deaths. Those strategies are still promoted based on intuitive evidence and emotional appeal. Still, the initial reaction was warranted, and despite the mitigation strategies, and the poorly conceived Planned Parent choices, the virus has evolved and the disease has been observed to be in a progressive decline.
The mitigation methods are no more than population training – like the UK requirement for people to go to the window and clap for the NHS. Now they are using masks to identify the compliant. Masks may be more use than a garlic necklace or a pocket full of posies – but not a lot. Netherlands after studying ‘the science’ – decided masks were a waste of time.
There are actually very few of the population that are susceptible to SARS-CoV-2 infection. Even in places such as New York City or Wuhan the actual numbers with symptoms of the disease is less than 10% of the total population. The Case Fatality Rate is also a lot lower than was forecast down at the influenza levels. Indeed in UK the numbers dying from influenza and pneumonia is 5 times that of COVID-19 but the levels of deaths from those diseases are not seen as a political problem.
For some reason stopping deaths from COVID-19 has become the single target variable. All the deaths caused by the reaction to COVID-19 don’t matter despite now exceeding COVID-19 deaths. The destruction of the economy doesn’t matter if we can save 5 more COVID-19 patients. As numbers become less scary they are dropped so positive tests now called cases are quoted rather than hospitalizations or deaths – as those are dropping.
This is a media driven political problem not a health problem any more. Sufficiency in zinc with consumption of zinc ionophores such as quercetin, resveratrol or green tea and a Brazil nut for selenium would appear to make people insusceptible had this been given as advice in February the world would have continued without all the economic damage done by the medical technocrats.
Why was that dietary advice not given? Indeed why is that dietary advice not given now?
Excellent comment
Exactly – 6 months of wailing doom screamed by the MSM and nary a word about vit D, zinc or diet. Why have they ignored immunologists? (see article by Beda M Stadler entitled coronavirus:why everyone was wrong)
I’m starting to see masks as secular sacramentals that help us affirm and demonstrate our faith in the experts. My guess is that n.n. knows what I mean, but I’ll give some background to make my point more comprehensible for those unfamiliar with Catholicism.
In a Catholic context a sacramental is an object (such as holy water, or a blessed medal) or an action (such as making the sign of the cross or genuflecting toward the tabernacle), which is regarded as encouraging devotion and thus spiritually aiding the person who uses it. This is not to be confused with a sacrament which is defined as an outward sign instituted by Christ to give grace, such as baptism or Eucharist. The sacrament is believed to actually confer the grace which it signifies, rather than being a mere symbol).
I don’t intend this to either ridicule or promote faith, but rather to point out the parallel between religious ritual and those who want us to wear masks in our homes and while out in open spaces. It starts to feel more like ritual symbolism that reinforces our submission to authority, than an actual action that is likely to produce a beneficial effect. The desired effect is to prove that we’re sheep.
being a catholic, it’s been extremely frustrating. when they opened up again a couple months ago, they required masks but my family did not wear them. our priest did not believe masks worked either when I spoke to him (he was a former scientist so I respected his input). he left in early july for another parish. a new priest comes in and the church bulletin suddenly had in large writing “please wear mask…” (as a side note, I remember Jan and Feb during winter when people were coughing all over the place there was no call to wear masks or social distance to prevent the spread of the flu and pneumonia so you didn’t kill grandma.)
I went 2 more times after that but my wife felt uncomfortable and wanted to go to mass digitally via youtube. I havent been to church in @5-6 weeks. we just envelopes in the mail for church “donations”. they want $$$$. I’m nearing a crossroads with the catholic church – between the social justice warriors, a leftist Pope (he’s no john paul), and now putting a diaper on your face just to go to worship Jesus. I’m praying for guidance – but not from fauci
On the mask issue, my understanding is that, in Wuhan where all this began, masks were already a tradition. Even with a government mandate on top of this already established tradition, AT THE VERY BEGINNING OF THE OUTBREAK, we still got to where we are today.
That said, there is no scientific evidence that mitigation strategies (e.g. masks, physical distancing) have reduced excess deaths
Indeed, where’s the double-blind studies on those mitigation strategies. If there’s no double blind studies it’s not science and doesn’t work (according to the logic of our local anti-HCQ trolls).
n.n,
The whole DemoKKKrat strategy seems to panicking as much of the population as possible, then threaten and intimidate the rest for control while their cronies in Big Pharma get rich off of an unneeded and probably harmful vaccine! I’m sure that no bribes or kickbacks will be involved!
Off topic, but are you saying that you’re against the Only A Few Black Lives Matter movement? They are also known as the Burn, Loot and Murder crime syndicate since extortion and protection rackets are a large part of their M.O.
richard August 24, 2020 at 2:48 pm
Mark Woolhouse said lockdown was a “panic measure” but admitted it was the only option at the time because “we couldn’t think of anything better to do”.
There was no need to do anything –
… 2020 – COVID 19 – 488,729 dead and counting
2020 – World Population – 7.7 billion (est)
2020 – 0.006% world’s population has died.
———————————————–
I assume you believe that if nothing had been done to isolate infections there would still have been 0.006% deaths?
I therefore wonder why hospitals have isolation wards for infectious diseases. Why they worry about visitors with MRSA and C. difficile.
In my mind this shows that isolation works at reducing infections.
If isolation was not practised in the USA what do you think the number of Covid infections would have been? The initial run of some models showed infections/deaths in the millions if no action were taken and of course people cried fake. This is not the flu. It seems to be more communicable.
The case fatality rate seems to be about 2%
there are 75million above the age of 60 where deaths seem to occur.
this would give 1.5 million deaths.
I personally do not find this acceptable – your view may be different
covid fatality rate is not 2%… not even close…. I’m assuming you got 2% by dividing #deaths by #infected… what about the vast majority that get infected but never know it? this will certainly being the death rate down… likely to @ .2-.3%, if not lower if they actually only included deaths FROM covid in the death total, instead if also including deaths WITH covid and deaths HAVING covid-like symtoms but no test to confirm the infection.
For all those like nicholas that say that many posting here on WUWT are hypocrites and doing what we say climate alarmists do (not look at the science), I wish you’d hold the CDC accountable for their unscientific FROM/WITH/SYMPTOMS guidance for determining covid deaths, as well as social media and “news” networks for stifling any discussion regarding HCQ, whether it’s banning their videos, suspending their social network accounts, blacklisting them from being interviewed or providing counterpoints on “news” networks, threatening to revoke medical licenses, firing them from their place of employment (hospitals, clinics…). Most Americand have only heard one side of this issue, thanks in large part to the blackout of opposition voices by large media platforms.
of course isolation works. but we never had true isolation. people still worked. food still got stocked on the shelves. people still went shopping.
when do you unlock? from all the 2nd and 3rd lockdowns we’re seeing in some countries around the world, lockdowns seem to be prolonging the disease as infections rise again upon opening up. herd immunity may be the best bet for this disease – especially with a mortality rate that will likely be @ .1-.2%.
And yet people contract the Covid and develop no symptoms…millions…turd sandwich
.
You are a known liar for telling people to drink bleach.
Derg:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/robertglatter/2020/04/25/calls-to-poison-centers-spike–after-the-presidents-comments-about-using-disinfectants-to-treat-coronavirus/#372229c61157
Words have consequences.
It’s as simple as that, and words coming from the President of the United States matter.
They matter because words and direction coming from the President are typically taken seriously by people who live in the U.S.
When Donald Trump said that he would consider exploring the use of injecting disinfectants into the body to treat coronavirus, the medical community shuddered due to the dangerous and irresponsible implications of this suggestion.
…
Meanwhile, calls to New York City’s Poison Control Center for exposure to specific household cleaners and disinfectants increased more than twofold after the President’s comments on Thursday, WNBC New York reported today. Data from the New York Poison Center center revealed that in the 18 hours after Trump’s comments, the Poison Center received 30 exposure calls about disinfectants. Ten involved bleach, 9 were about Lysol, and 11 others regarding other household cleaners. Compared to the same time window last year, there were a total of 13 exposure calls, with 2 involving bleach, but none involving Lysol-type products.
Galfrunt, I suppose it’s best that we ban speech anywhere it’s subject to interpretation. Maybe also, while we’re at it, make it illegal to say things in gest or sarcastically.
Oh, wait, we’ve lived with the first Amendment for a few centuries now, and that allows me to say “pound sand”. And, I only mean that metaphorically. Please do not try that… it could wreak havoc with your internals.
Isolation seemed like the best option early on when little was known about ChiCom-19 thanks to the CCP and their pet dog, the WHO! If we had locked down for three weeks and then reassessed the data things might be a little different.
We are now looking at MORE people dying from the lockdowns than the virus, without even taking financial ruin, bankruptcies and business failures into account! “Aside from that, Mrs. Lincoln, how was the play?”
As the Swedes have shown the lockdowns and mask mandates are unhelpful at best, and possibly harmful to the goal of reaching herd immunity among the population! Protecting the vulnerable and treating the infected with simple, inexpensive regimens allows everyone else to get back to living life to the fullest. Open the schools and END the shutdowns; Herd Immunity Threshold is about to run us over!
…”if”
+2 Million
Mark Woolhouse said lockdown was a “panic measure” but admitted it was the only option at the time because “we couldn’t think of anything better to do”.
There was no need to do anything –
That is only something that could be known In hindsight. At the time, with the information (and misinformation – I’m looking at you Neil Ferguson and the Imperial college) at hand, it was believed that it would be much more virulent and deadly than it’s turned out to be and thus it was felt that something needed to be done.
It was known at the time of the 1918 pandemic that the worse thing to do was to keep people inside. NYC found much to their surprise that more than 60% of their cases were to people that had stayed ‘locked down’. The reason there is an influenza season is that during winter people tend to gather close together indoors in the warm. In the southern states of the USA people gather together in the summer in the air conditioning that also blows the airborne virus across and between rooms.
The best approach would have been to spend as much time as possible outdoors and avoid talking loudly, singing or shouting close to anyone especially indoors.
In addition as stated several posts above – the population should have been directed to ensure that they were sufficient in zinc, vitamin D and selenium (1 Brazil nut a day)
It would be interesting to see who first had the idea of locking down the population and persuaded the scared politicians that it was the thing to do. I have a feeling it was China and their first response in Wuhan.
Yes . . . except you’re comparing apples and oranges . . . .
The Spanish Flu pandemic ran 2+ years and the figures cited cover that whole period. For the seasonal flu there is a “season” with a designated start and end, as arbitrary as they may be.
For Covid, IMO, it’s just too soon . . . it’s not over! We know it’s not done — are we at ~1/2? 3/4? 1/4? We just don’t know.
Come back in 6 to 18 months and let us know how the “final” figures compare.
Anyway, that’s what I think.
to use 8 1/2 months of data as the b
There is nothing wrong with short term locking down hot spots, but general lock downs are ridiculous.
From the very beginning it was known that we can’t stop the virus we can only control it and limit its ability to overwhelm the medical system. “flatten the curve” remember? Remember everyone saying we were going to have 2 million dead in the US? Now 180,000 is the end of the world and a complete failure even though the vast majority of these deaths were the very old and most had other serious medical issue, any other serious virus would have done the same.
The rest is all politics and trying to scare and manipulate people. “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself” remember those words and who said them? Which party was he from? Do you need any more proof of how far gone that party is from what it use to be? Be proud, be strong and be for America and do whats right and stop being afraid!
180K did not die from covid. As a senator once said at an Obama SOTU speach… “You lie!!!”
The CDC has already stated that only 6% of covid death were from covid. The remaining 94% of covid deaths were with comorbidities (avg of 2.6 comorbidities per death). So, what did they die from? Odds are it was from whatever comorbidity had the highest payout from Medicare…
97 adverse reports of all kinds (misspelled as 347 in the FDA Memorandum
One can only wonder how one “misspells” 97 as 347….
Perhaps the FDA farmed out the writing of the report to an FBI lawyer
David
Yes! 3+4 only adds to 7, not 9. 🙂
Global HCQ studies. PrEP, PEP, and early treatment studies show efficacy, while late treatment shows mixed results.
You should have given an explanation for the link you posted.
It is the roundup of all the studies done worldwide for HCQ and is a great resource for understanding why some studies show failure, especially studies that are designed to fail.
Science is not done by surveys.
Furthermore, the conclusion of this “article” is correlation, which is not causation.
I wonder if science is done better with tree ring proxies 😉
I would think that is obvious, William. But causation requires correlation. Correlation is the first test to see if the hypothesis is worth pursuing, am I wrong?
In this case, there is a concerted, politicized effort to obfuscate the raw data. In light of the Lancet hoax, if you deny that, then you disqualify yourself as an objective observer. CDC claims to have no knowledge of how or whether the distributed HCQ was used. Is that a reasonable situation? How is it not prima facie evidence of a bias against HCQ that they studiously avoid asking such basic questions as whether the therapy was used and what the outcome was. I guess that’s just too hard?
It seems to me that the author’s attempt to answer the question of whether there may be a correlation between mortality rate and HCQ treatments by region is an attempt to cut through the BS and draw some data out of a cloud of uncertainty.
Of course it can’t prove anything. But it says that it’s worth trying to get the real data and do more meaningful analysis.
TW – You sound like you don’t know what you are talking about. Are you repeating Group Think?
A July 1st publication in the International Journal of Infectious Diseases concluded the following:
“The Cox regression result for the two propensity matched groups (Table 4) indicates that treatment with hydroxychloroquine resulted in a mortality hazard ratio decrease of 51% (p = 0.009).” (https://www.ijidonline.com/article/S1201-9712(20)30534-8/fulltext)
I am pretty sure “William Teach” can be placed in quotes (especially the word “Teach” which is much more likely indoctrinate), but this is absolutely an article, therefore there is no reason whatsoever to place the word article in quotes.
If science is not done by surveys then please explain what is the relevance of people repeating, over and over again, that “97% of scientists agree…” Asking for a friend!
It appears that 80% of the population already has immunity to some degree to this virus. So far no country has gotten over 20% of the population infected. This will be the nail in the coffin for any vaccine.
—————————————————————-
Countering the Second Wave with Facts, not Misconceptions
By: Udi Qimron, Uri Gavish, Eyal Shahar, Michael Levitt
https://www.dropbox.com/s/72hi9jfcqfct1n9/Haaretz-20Jul20_ENGLISH%2012082020%20v3.pdf?dl=0
Some highlights for you:
Pre-immunity. No country has got more than 20% infected before it died out.
In several closed communities that underwent testing, the infection rate was always capped at 20%, which statistically aligns with maximal infection rate in these communities rather than recurring coincidences.
In Sweden the infection rate did not exceed 20% and the percentage of people who survived the epidemic exceeds 99.9% of the population.
In Belgium, the country with the highest population mortality rate, where less than 20% were infected, and more than 99.9% of the population has survived.
Immediate removal of most restrictions on the economy, immediate return to normal life of low-risk population while helping high-risk groups reduce the rate of social contacts is in order.
—————————————————————-
PS. And now I go and anxiously await Mosher with his content free, drive by commenting to put me in my place 🙂
TRM
With the triple-digit resurgence of COVID-19 in South Korea, Mosher may be too busy to drive by. Or, he may be welded in to his quarters.
The resurgence of covid-19 in South Korea is evidence of the futility of contact tracing. Contact tracing slows the natural development of herd immunity.
If South Korean and Italian citizens had switched places in January, South Korea would be as bad as Italy and Italy would be as well off as S. Korea.
Pre-existing immunity from exposure to other corona viruses, helps reduce disease severity and also helps get to herd immunity more quickly.
Last heard from he was in Dubai waxing eloquently about their “science based” “non-denialist” ways. Like ordering 30+ million doses of HCQ in April 🙂
Let me give you a hand, TRM. “Wrong!” 🙂
I knew I could count on you guys. 😉
You forget, your royal whatever is an English major that doesn’t use proper punctuation or spelling.
mor like not even wrong
Actually it would be not even wrong.
A more interesting question is why so many drugs have been claimed to show efficacy in treating COVID-19.
Just recently, there is:
https://scitechdaily.com/hepatitis-drugs-may-be-effective-covid-19-coronavirus-treatment/
There was also a claim of efficacy for birth control estrogen. At last count, there are about three dozen drugs approved for some medical use that appear to have utility in treating COVID-19. Is there any precedent for other diseases where such a broad spectrum of drugs, with little apparently in common, showing utility for a novel disease?
“A more interesting question is why so many drugs have been claimed to show efficacy in treating COVID-19.”
Because it’s a wimpy virus. It only seems to be able to ki!ll people near death in nursing homes, people already very sick with other conditions and those of any age (the prior two groups included) who become unfortunate victims of a dysfunctional medical system that intubates covid patients much too often.
I was wondering if there is any one thing, which nobody thinks has any effect?
CO2
Scissor
+1
Probably water is in the same category as CO2.
From the Guardian:
“Scientists say CO² has a major effect on CoVid 19, disproving previous claims that it had no effect”
/sarc (just in case)
It looks like there is yet another drug that appears to have use in treating COVID-19:
https://www.marketwatch.com/story/a-common-medication-for-older-adults-improves-covid-19-survival-rates-researchers-say-2020-08-24?siteid=yhoof2&yptr=yahoo
Three dozen drugs that have been shown to have potential for treating COVID-19 and most of you prefer something that has been recommended by a real estate developer. Let’s be clear. I support what Trump is doing for the economy and immigration. However, he is the last person I would ask for medical advice! Some of you here give him a good run for his money, but then I suspect you suffer from Hero Worship Syndrome.
+1
Nobody gets everything right. Nobody. Well, God by definition though the flood tells a different story.
Maybe creating beings with free will that can look after themselves is more difficult than imagined! Are we just the latest in a long line of experiments, and not necessarily the last!?
Of course Trump just makes it up 😉
Oh what a tangled web we weave…..
There are just too many reports of the HCQ with the zpack working to discount it and claim he is giving medical advice.
Clyde your TDS is showing, Trump never gave “medical advice”, he commented that he’d heard good things about HCQ (“It’s shown very, very encouraging early results”) in relation to treating COVID-19 and was optimistic about it (“a real chance to be one of the biggest game changers in the history of medicine”). And that’s all it’s taken for those with TDS to be against it and claim Trump is giving out “medical advice”.
Thank goodness for people I see here, defending baseless hate because people “believe” without being critical. It’s been difficult to put into words how frustrating it’s been to have to deal with people who fail to act o or seek truth.
I am beginning to think they have a physical disability, when a significant percentage of folk have space in their minds that are owned by outside forces. That owned space is unavailable to these folk, so logical discourse will not, can not happen.
Endicott
TDS? You apparently missed the part above where I said I support Trump on his economic and immigration policies. I will be voting for him! Surely you can do better than accuse someone of something that is obviously wrong. That is the behavior of climate alarmists.
“a real chance to be one of the biggest game changers in the history of medicine” You don’t think that amounts to medical advice? Or that those swooning at his feet will write it off as objective editorializing?
What would be the opposite of TDS?
Cause some people seem to suffer from it and it is equally unhealthy.
As many front line doctors have said – zinc, HCQ, azithromycin, CURES more than 90% of patients who receive the regimen before the disease progresses to require hospitalization. It is an outpatient treatment.
The president a businessman gets continual briefs on all aspects of the pandemic from all sorts of sources. He is told at one briefing with multiple people present that front line doctors have a regiment that works. Do you for a second thing that the president did that research himself? Obviously you do as you seem to think he generated the idea that the HCQ regiment was a game changer. Someone told him that. It is probably the first time the president has heard of HCQ. So he passes on what he has been told.
Immediately, a drug that had been given without problem to people as an over the counter drug for decades – was said to have side effects by left wing TV talking head ‘doctors’. The medical technocrats from NIH/CDC who have not been near a real patient since their training, called all reports of successful treatments anecdotal. And from then on did their best to ensure that no clinical trial was correctly carried out.
The regimen is based on raising the level of intra cellular zinc in cells which blocks viral replication. HCQ one of many zinc ionophores assists zinc across the cell walls into the cells. So the medical technocrats did a bait and switch. A treatment that is an outpatient treatment to raise the level of zinc in cells was given without zinc to inpatient seriously ill patients some even on ventilators. This complete lack of governance in medical trials merits striking off all the people involved. They don’t appear to have even ensured that their trials were testing the correct regimen. This is so obtuse that it must have been done on purpose. Research papers show that increasing the zinc in cells blocks replication of a host of viruses for which vaccines are sold. Then there is a continual parade of the medical talking heads trumpeting each failed clinical mistrial, this reached a crescendo with The Lancet publishing a completely false invented paper that had obviously not been checked saying that HCQ was dangerous.
WHY?
Now we have been told repeatedly that nothing can be back to ‘normal’ until there is a vaccine and everyone is vaccinated. Much to their surprise the administration has provided funding for the pharmaceutical companies to telescope the trials and even start manufacture of vaccines that are most likely to work passing their phase 1 and 2 testing and several are in phase 3 already. This means that the much vaunted vaccines could be available in the fall. SURPRISE!! The same screeching shroud wavers that were telling us we have to wait for a vaccine – now say that even vaccines won’t work for more than 3 months. Greta Thunberg is more believable than these ‘medical professionals’
We are now in the position that in many countries the death rates from COVID-19 is below that of influenza. But only deaths from COVID-19 are important.
This is a manufactured crisis
Zinc, plus a zinc ionophore, plus vitamin D and selenium – will ensure that you are insusceptible to SARS-CoV-2 and a whole host of other viruses. The vaccine industry cannot afford you to know that and the politicians that want to make use of the pandemic don’t want it to stop.
Fact:
Any Zn ionophore plus small amounts of Zn and lots of vit D3 is a major threat to the “cold virus” industry. There’s your motive. HCQ has some other mechanisms to mitigate RNA virus replication beyond being a Zn ionophore…
Fact:
People most strongly in favor of spreading this information have only one motive. They care.
I wouldn’t advise taking HCQ for extended periods of time and definitely against cold viruses cause it inhibits autophagy which is a very important process for healthy aging and longevity.
Yes Clyde, TDS or maybe you’re just too blinded by the fake news media. It doesn’t matter that you offer mealy mouthed praise to cover the fact that you are blindly taking Trump out of context to fit your idea that he’s saying/doing something he isn’t.
“a real chance to be one of the biggest game changers in the history of medicine” You don’t think that amounts to medical advice?
No it isn’t. No non-deranged person would think it is (hence why I call out your TDS). He’s clearly saying it’s possible that if it works out to be as good as early indications indicate *then* it would be a game changer. He didn’t say it was a game changer. He didn’t even suggest anyone should immediately go out and try it. He was expressing optimism, not medical advice as most sane people would easily recognize. Stop listening to the fake news media, it’s clearly rotting your brain.
John: People like Clyde don’t understand that the media are torturing the language to change the meaning of words and sentences so that conversation is stifled. It’s an essential attack on free speech. Clyde is an unwittingly useful idiot.
“Hero Worship Syndrome” is the 98 pound weakling asymmetrical twin of TRUMP DERANGEMENT SYNDROME’. Sometimes there is nothing so obscure as the obvious.
I think it is fairly common for drug trials in intensive care units to show mortality stats that are half of the ‘norm’ especially in busy ICUs.
The reason is simply the additional status checks and care calls by interested staff that the patients receive to see if the meds are working. Double blind reduces this effect significantly.
The sad thing is that many questions about hydroxychloroquin could be answered if the Government would open the medicare data base. From billing records we can know when medicare patients were diagnosed, if they filled a prescription and when in relationship to the diagnosis, whether they were hospitalized, put on ventilators, etc. While somewhat crude the number of cases would provide tremendous statistical power.
Another question that we should be able to get an answer to quickly relates to immunity associated with prior coronovirus infections. Compare outcomes of primary care physicians 40 and older who have been exposed to everything under the sun to a matched general population.
It looks like Leo Goldstein has a preconceived notion that HCQ is an effective prophylactic/therapy. He then searches for data to confirm his notion. He ignores double blind scientific studies that show no prophylactic or therapeutic efficacy.
Link, please.
https://www.wired.com/story/major-hydroxychloroquine-trial-shows-no-prevention-benefits/
https://www.livescience.com/coronavirus-chloroquine-study-stopped-early.html
“In the Brazilian study, some patients taking a high dose of the drug developed dangerous heart rhythm problems. ”
A “study” designed to fail ?
Steven Hatfill, a veteran virologist, noted at RealClearPolitics that “There are now 53 studies that show positive results of hydroxychloroquine in COVID infections. There are 14 global studies that show neutral or negative results — and 10 of them were of patients in very late stages of COVID-19, where no antiviral drug can be expected to have much effect.”
Hatfill continued, “Of the remaining four studies, two come from the same University of Minnesota author. The other two are from the faulty Brazil paper, which should be retracted, and the fake Lancet paper, which was.”
https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/matt-margolis/2020/08/07/theres-a-mountain-of-evidence-that-hydroxychloroquine-is-an-effective-treatment-for-covid-19-n763953
“We conducted a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial across the United States and parts of Canada testing hydroxychloroquine as postexposure prophylaxis. We enrolled adults who had household or occupational exposure to someone with confirmed Covid-19 at a distance of less than 6 ft for more than 10 minutes while wearing neither a face mask nor an eye shield (high-risk exposure) or while wearing a face mask but no eye shield (moderate-risk exposure). Within 4 days after exposure, we randomly assigned participants to receive either placebo or hydroxychloroquine (800 mg once, followed by 600 mg in 6 to 8 hours, then 600 mg daily for 4 additional days). The primary outcome was the incidence of either laboratory-confirmed Covid-19 or illness compatible with Covid-19 within 14 days.”
While the administered dose of HCQ in the New England Journal of Medicine study was not lethal, it was high enough to weaken the recipients.
The Brazilian study used potentially lethal doses. Surprisingly, it did not have a positive effect – the study had to be stopped.
William, please get serious.
World-o–meters say that over 180,000 people in the USA hae died. If this HCQ was effective, then we would have not have had this many deaths. If you think this thing is “political” there would not be > 800K deaths in the world.
William says worldometer says 180K have died in USA from covid. You know this number is inflated because it comingles deaths
with/deaths from/deaths with covid-like symptoms but no test all as covid deaths when quite a few are not dew to covid (I’ve read total covid deaths are at least 25% inflated). Blame the CDC for their crap politicized guidance for this inflation. This whole scamdemic took advantage of a virus that kills mainly those aged 70+ and has become a powergrab and $$$ making enterprise in many parts of the world.
Over 180,000 people in the USA have died. HCQ is not recommended there. How could this be an argument against HCQ?
curious george, 180K people have not died from covid. Only 6% of all covid deaths are where covid is the only condition. 94% of covid deaths had an average of 2.6 underlying comorbidities. what was the actual cause of all the deaths of this 94% group? if you’re going to tell me that all of these people in this group of 94% died from covid and not from one of the comorbidities, please go back to school and learn your ABCs and 123s again.
Oh, and the CDC quietly is no longer requiring people who fly to USA to quarantine for 14 days nor are they requiring you to get tested for covid if your asymptomatic but likely to have it (e.g. some in your household tested positive). Looks like they see the end of the scamdemic may be near. we’re not there yet but the line is trending that way.
One more thing, the fauci of england was interviewed and essentially said lockdowns were the dumbest thing ever and that all they did was delay what we’re seeing now (the downward trend of covid). had we not locked down, we would likely have been at this point 2 or 3 months ago – but we’ll never know now.
all the pro-lockdown pro-mask idiots did is screw our economy, screw our children’s education, and cause more deaths downstream (undiagnosed or delayed diagnosis deaths, suicides, overdoses). the lockdown cure was worse than the disease itself. come out of the dark and into the light and admit you were wrong (I’ve eaten crow a number of times in my life – and if I’m wrong in this, I’ll know what’s for dinner) so we can have WUWT focus on the climate scam again.
Both BAD studies. One used too high a dose and the other used only HCQ.
It must be given early and with zinc and Athromycin.
Thank you for straightening Will Teach’s post out for him.
Why do people try so hard to win the argument against something so beneficial to human beings that they can’t even rub two brain cells together to actually think about how the studies were conducted?
It’s rare these days for someone to respond, “Wow, I had not considered that… thank you.” Instead they hunt for more confirmation bias. Sickening.
Lento
You said, “It’s rare these days for someone to respond, ‘Wow, I had not considered that… thank you.’ Instead they hunt for more confirmation bias. Sickening.”
There is an old saying that “When you point a finger at someone, there are three more pointing back at yourself.” Think about it!
You just dodged… with a “look squirrel” comment. Not so clever are you.
Unlike you, Clyde, I realize that I learn nothing by being right, and quite a bit by being wrong. It’s a gift to be wrong –and to be able to recognize it.
Do you, Clyde, want to stay ignorant at all costs? Me thinks yes.
Mario, both Clyde and I are actual scientists.
Neither of us came upon our ability to parse information all of a sudden-like, back in March.
And both of us know damn well that your behavior is not only loathesome, but textbook.
You are a broken record, a one trick pony.
You contribute virtually nothing except an endless stream of juvenile snark and inane vitriol.
And on top of all of that…I am willing to bet cash, a pile of it, that you will never learn anything about this subject that you do not “know” already.
Your mind is made up…closed and locked up tight.
You should at least admit it.
And what is all that doubletalk a few comments upthread?
Do you think it is proven or not?
Are you intentionally refusing to say explicitly, right here, what you have plainly said already, many times?
Nicholas:
I have respectfully and fully refrained from responding to you. And now, just after you posted that you are not a thin skinned cry baby comes this post from you contradicting your own post. I could not and would not make this stuff up, but you can and just did. Get some Kleenex.
And again, I request that you stop defaming me with make-believe lies and instead make your pleas for people to listen to you. At best, I wear your ad hominem attacks as a badge of honor that you feel so threatened by my posts to other people while you beg for people to appeal to your so-called authority through anonymous fake names.
Nicholas wrote:
“Are you intentionally refusing to say explicitly, right here, what you have plainly said already, many times?”
Response: Nicholas, I stand by my post as written. I do not stand by so-called scientists’ edited and altered versions about my post so they can attack fictitious things as you just did.
Do you have a problem with my posts as quoted?
Mario posted: “Yes, there are some smart people fighting hard to not allow a free people the right to use an inexpensive treatment that (and let me be clear) HAS BEEN SHOWN TO WORK.”
Nicholas:
My advice to you.
Instead of:
-calling for others to appeal to your hidden credentials
-putting down ad hominem attacks (in attempts to elevate your contested beliefs)
-complaining
-strawmen arguments that we have all seen from you where you attack re-written and re-characterized phrases of others
-torturing language e.g. if it’s not a double blind study there is no proof, yet still using selective non double blind studies as proof of your views.
You should make your points and let them stand for themselves. When you argue, quote the words said.
I have learned some things from you, but I also question your conclusions as severely and often fatally flawed.
So I hope you don’t go away, but instead take my advice above. Argument is good. Your behavior can be significantly improved by taking my advice.
Good luck on your journey.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/factcheck/2020/07/21/fact-check-hydroxychloroquine-hasnt-helped-covid-19-studies-show/5407547002/
maybe search HCQ ineffective yourself….just sayin’…
Thanks for a nice write up with absolutely no data. I prefer William Teach to you any day.
There are 20 or so reference articles on that posted link. Both HCQ negative and positive. Did you even look at it ?
“Link, please.”
Haha…I get it…warmista troll!
Now do “scientist”!
Do you really want links to double blind scientific studies that show no prophylactic or therapeutic efficacy?
Because if you do, saying “Link, please” does not seem like a very effective way to ask.
It sounds like a great way to not be taken seriously.
Because, you know…
No kidding, where is the double blind study of HCQ with zpack given at the beginning?
Patient is either nearly dead or just given HCQ…it doesn’t work.
Yes we could all search for it but when we end up referring to different papers because different search terms and engines find different stuff what happens?
If you have a point and a link then there is no ambiguity or miscommunication. We would all be on the same page.
I don’t think it is too much to ask.
It’s too much to ask when you are asking a TDS-deranged troll.
You would learn something assessing the validity of those papers….is my point.
Nicholas,
So far, most of the studies that use HCQ correctly show a 75-80% reduction in fatality rate! The evidence from Switzerland confirms this figure. The death rates of countries around the world show that those where HCQ use is widespread have astonishingly low fatality rates compared to the Anglosphere where Big Pharma vetoed the inexpensive treatment.
The overinflated US fatality figure is ~175,000 at this point; meaning that widespread and correct use of the HCQ cocktail could have prevented between 125,000 and 150,000 deaths! Are you sure you want to be arguing for that side? I know, I know; you say a lot of those deaths were caused by the intubations and nursing home policies that seemed to be purposefully designed to kill our elderly! That still doesn’t make siding with the DemoKKKrats and their ChiCom masters a good idea! Are you getting paid by the CCP or is this all pro bono?
AM
You have to remember that the majority of people killed have been in elderly care facilities and prisons, because of bad decisions made by democrat governors. Further, the US has a higher percentage of Blacks than western European countries and Blacks have a much higher mortality rate than White people. You are comparing apples and avocados. That is the point of rigorous medical studies — to remove confounding factors.
I suggest you back off on the insults. You are not doing your credibility any favors because most here recognize that ad hominem attacks are the last resort of those without any substantive argument.
What exactly do you mean by “correctly”, A.M.?
Serious question. What exactly do you know that doctors doing clinical trials and treating patients in hospitals do not know?
And what is the correct way to use it?
Which studies did not use it correctly?
Would those be all the ones that tested thousands and thousands of people and found no benefit?
All over the entire planet?
All of those people, doctors and clinicians, know less than internet climate bloggers?
Because the only way you can make the assertion you made, is if you consider every study that found a benefit to be “correct”, and all the ones that did not, to be “incorrect”.
So you must be really smart and know exactly what using it correctly means?
Can you please tell us?
We can then take a look at all the studies with this info from you, and prove they were all bad studies and we need to have them retracted.
We do it all the time, so please…why are you and everyone else who keep saying this, refusing to give specific info on what exactly is the “correct” way to use it?
Hey, just looking at the Ivermectin preprint.
It turns out the people that were in the no ivermectin group, the ones that did died more often, were far more likely to have gotten HCQ and Azithromycin!
Now, aint that a be-atch?
“At the time of analysis, al l patien ts in the coho rt had met the endpoint o f death, discha rge alive, or awaiting transfer to a sk illed facil ity. Baseline cha racter isti cs and between group comparisons are shown in Tabl e 1. Characterist ics were s imilar between groups, however hypertens ion was more preval ent in the Ivermecti n group, whereas the use of hydrox ychlor oquine and hydroxychlo roquine plus azi thromyci n were higher in the usual care grou p. No other significant be tween-group differ ence s were found among baseline charac t eristi cs or comorbidities, in cluding age, race, cardiac comorbidi ties, or smoking sta tu s. Outcomes . CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 International licenseIt is made available under a is the author/funder, who has granted medRxiv a license to display the preprint in perpetuity. (which was not certified by peer review)The copyright holder for this preprint this version posted June 10, 2020. .https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.06.06.20124461doi: medRxiv preprint
That did not copy well, but it is legible and anyone can just use the link.
Global HC Q studies. PrEP, PEP, and early treatment studies show efficacy, while late treatment shows mixed results.
He ignores double blind scientific studies that show no prophylactic or therapeutic efficacy.
Link, please .
Still trying to get other people to do your homework?
If you want links, you know…this here is the internet…
Exactly Sweet Old Bob just look. It should be easier than finding Studies on alien life On Mars that speak Boche.
You know Nicholas, for someone who complained about trolls upthread, you’re behaving a lot like a troll.
That’s because, on this subject, he is one. Always has been.
TRM
August 24, 2020 at 5:46 pm
Yes we could all search for it but when we end up referring to different papers because different search terms and engines find different stuff what happens?
If you have a point and a link then there is no ambiguity or miscommunication. We would all be on the same page.
I don’t think it is too much to ask.
TRM said it much nicer than I could ….
Is that what you said to warmistas who answered every comment with “Got a link”?
And then changed the subject…on a topic everyone had been discussing ad nauseum.
If you do not have any way to find links to the double blind clinical trials showing HCQ is not beneficial against COVID-19…just ask.
Here we have a string of disapproving remarks, bristling at the notion that a grown man can or should be expected to look something up himself if he wants it.
But I understand…we got some underachieving snowflakes on the board.
Just ask…you do not even have to say “pretty please with sugar on top”…but iffen you do, I sure would appreciate it!
If you do not have any way to find links to the double blind clinical trials showing HCQ is not beneficial against COVID-19…just ask.
he did ask, you troll. It’s up to the person making the claim to provide the links, it’s not up to everyone else to do their homework for them.
You know perfectly well, as does everyone else here, that links to all of those studies have been posted many times over the past days, weeks, and months.
And no, he did not ask me for anything.
You know what everyone acknowledges about the person who resorts to ad hominem remarks, no?
But have at it…unlike you, I am not a thin skinned crybaby.
when animals feel trapped in a corner, they lash out… when you cant defend your post, you say “search the internet for links”.
+42
“search the internet for links” is how trolls responds when asked to back up what they say.
goracle
Nicholas has a history of providing citations for his claim. However, Anthony Watt has made it clear that he doesn’t appreciate more than one or two links in a comment.
You seem to not understand that a lot of bad examples does not add up to a good result.
The person you are talking about is not dumb, but is fatally misguided.
“However, Anthony Watt has made it clear that he doesn’t appreciate more than one or two links in a comment.”
I’ve been commenting here for ten years and sometimes provided many links, but had no objections from moderators or Watts.
clyde, I’ve seen nicholas provide hyperlinks in some of his comments and I appreciate it.
he doesn’t need to provide 10 links, only 1 link that will strengthen his comment’s position… if he needs more than one link, i would think he could put it in a separate comment if 2 links are not allowed in same comment… my 2 cents.
When is there going to be a double-blind, randomized clinical trial on HCQ+Zinc?
probably never since Trump and the media and the MAGAsphere politicized it.
science was the first casualty in this pandemic
Trump politicized it?
You are getting dumber with every post.
I didn’t think it was possible for the English Major to devolve any further, but his TDS shows not only that he could but that he has.
I had hoped Mosher meant to imply that after Trump mentioned that HCQ could be a game changer, the TDS LEFT put a stop to Trump’s good idea, because they will not allow Trump to have “His he cured cancer moment”
To Mr. Know-it-all: It is in process right now under the direction of Dr. Ananda Prasad. Do some research. And from speaking to the Dr (who hates Trump), it was the visceral hatred by the media and others that politicized HCQ because they did not want Trump to get anything right, which made it hard to get permission to conduct clinical trials. However, they could not deny Dr. Prasad because of his stature as a world renown expert on Zinc.
“Hero Worship Syndrome” is the 98 pound weakling asymmetrical twin of TRUMP DERANGEMENT SYNDROME’. Sometimes there is nothing so obscure as the obvious.
How many do you want?
What country.
I know of at least nine off the top of my head.
Here are a couple in the US:
-Hydroxychloroquine and Zinc With Either Azithromycin or Doxycycline for Treatment of COVID-19 in Outpatient Setting
This one is recruiting as we speak!
It is comparing HCQ and either z pak or doxycycline, with zinc for everyone!
I hope they are not poisoning everyone on purpose!
They started in April, wrapping up end of September.
750 people total.
No placebo…testing one antibiotic against another.
Many studies have looked at this question using these two drugs over the years…
*Psst…doxycycline is always better
https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT04370782
This one is testing HCQ, and vitamins C and D and zinc in 600 people, started in June, wrapping up after one year.
Hope they give some interim info!
One arms gets placebo and the three nutrients, the other arm, just the three nutrients and a placebo.
Subjects are all medical workers who get exposed and are at high risk as a result.
That is probably why they expect it to take a year…they have to wait for 600 such people to sign up after being exposed.
The sponsor is a company that is a genetic research lab!
Score one for corporate America!
“Merica! WoooHooo!
https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT04335084
Golly, not another misspeak:
“One arms gets HCQ and the three nutrients, the other arm, just the three nutrients and a placebo.”
Poisoning people with zinc is highly unlikely. Most especially elderly are at least borderline zinc deficient if you measure cellular levels instead of blood levels. Even people taking high levels of zinc for Wilson’s disease are fine as long as they supplement copper. Look up the research of Dr Ananda Prasad or better yet let me know if you want to email him questions.
I was referring to the HCQ that some people here are saying is being given in toxic doses in most of the clinical trials, and furthermore it is being done on purpose. Not me saying that…I was being flippant as a way of dealing with the mind boggling comments some people here have been making.
Everyone who has reached a different conclusion from them, about anything, is not only an evil bastard, but a murderer.
Zinc appears to be very hard to actually get a fatal dose of…I did not find anything that discussed that.
But it does seem to be limited by absorption rates even if someone tool way too much.
A most interesting, long read.
“Hydroxychloroquine: A Morality Tale”
https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/science/articles/hydroxychloroquine-morality-tale
Please make announced attachments available.
https://www.news18.com/news/world/brazil-study-finds-hcq-ineffective-for-covid-19-after-bolsonaro-pushes-for-widespread-use-of-drug-2731003.html
https://www.indiatvnews.com/news/world/hcq-hydroxychloroquine-ineffective-as-preventive-antiviral-against-covid-19-study-642972
Sorry for the omission.
https://defyccc.com/wp-content/uploads/Summary.xlsx
https://defyccc.com/wp-content/uploads/Hydroxychloroquine-Actual-Use-USA-Attachment.zip
See in #comment-3068821 or on my website https://defyccc.com/a-study-of-actual-hcq-usage-is-published-in-wuwt/
It has been known for some time that zinc interferes with coronavirus replication.
https://journals.plos.org/plospathogens/article?id=10.1371/journal.ppat.1001176
The problem is cellular introduction.
Only “Rona”?
Howcumzit?
“Zn2+ Inhibits Coronavirus and Arterivirus RNA Polymerase Activity In Vitro and Zinc Ionophores Block the Replication of These Viruses in Cell Culture.”
We have passed the point of no return. Admission that early treatment with HCQ mitigates disease progression, and reduces viral viability, implies culpability for excess deaths. Same with Planned Parent.
The widely excepted economic principle of regulatory capture predicts that producers of HCQ, which does not have patent protection, would have a more difficult time with the FDA and CDC than the owners of new drugs, that will enjoy a presumption of patent-ability. Robert Higgs, a former professor of mine provides succinct description of the behavior of captured regulatory agencies.
“The government’s regulatory agencies have created or sustained private monopoly power more often than they have precluded or reduced it. This result was exactly what many interested parties desired from government regulation, though they would have been impolitic to have said so in public.” (Crisis and Leviathan page 8)
Dr. Farcey is a poster boy of regulatory capture with his insistence that HCQ pass the extremely expensive clinical trials, that no one has any incentive to fund, to evaluate the safety of a drug that as been taken by millions people for more than fifty years. The agencies just recently tried this with convalescent plasma, which has been around for hundreds of years. This sort of nonsense kills people.
I miss ole Henry going crazy about Trump and telling us over and over and over how HCQ doesn’t work.
I swear he would rather be on a ventilator than take HCQ with the zpack.
A number of folks take HCQ on some schedule, for other aliments. How many of them died of the Chinese virus?
How many became infected with it? If infected, how many had no symptoms? Mild symptoms? Hospitalized?
Would they not be the “canary in the coal mine”?
Who writes a “paper” with a citation authored by “anonymous” (reference number 6)
Just like you, I don’t know. It is a bad taste to forget to sign your name. The paper looks interesting.
Just like you, I don’t know. It is a bad taste to forget to sign your name. The paper looks interesting.
Some people are persecuted for making studies showing that HCQ works, so they prefer to be anonymous. It is a living study from the same team that authors c19study.com team.
It doesn’t work.. It has been tried all over the globe, and if fails.
Survey says: “Whats Up With That Family Feud?
…
Got no Data? No problem, just do a survey!!!!!
..
This article is a disgrace. Anyone that has a rudimentary understanding of how science is done should ignore it.
Anyone who has a rudimentary understanding of how science is done should be appalled by the designed to fail experiments used to debunk HCQ used properly. That includes much of the criticism in this thread by obvious trolls.
+1
So Hoffer, why don’t you just do a a survey to prove your point?
Speaking of obvious trolls…
Sorry Mr. Hoffer, you are ignorant of medical science. Try saving a life once in a while.
William, this article may well be a disgrace. I can’t tell as the author did not provide any data.
Are the conclusions inconvenient?
Totally unsupported conclusions are no conclusions.
Would be nice to have resolution around the June 15 FDA action to revoke the HCQ EUA. Before/after HCQ usage would be telling.
and that all walks around the very obvious reality that Vitamin D3 works at some level yet our esteemed leaders are silent on this also.
If HCQ does no harm at the trivial does proposed and is taken in the bulk of the world where money still matters why would you ban it, set a maximum dose limit yes, make it go out with a warning, but banning it is all about politics.
Just how much is this an excuse to limit the peoples rights. More reminiscent of the harsh “Lysenkoism” of the Russian state in the 30’s.
I have a lot of respect for the comments of the people who write here that target the less than perfect “scientific method” but vilification of people that stand on the wrong side of the lefts position on things such as HCQ is totally and visibly part of the propaganda programs being pounded out. I’m sick of it.
Yes, there are some smart people fighting hard to not allow a free people the right to use an inexpensive treatment that (and let me be clear) HAS BEEN SHOWN TO WORK. The drivel and distraction I hear over and over again, “But if there is not double blind study, that means there is no proof” is a slight of hand strawman argument at best, and intellectually dishonest trick at worst.
Today, even smart people can be convinced that it’s best to prevent people from the benefit of choosing for themselves not to die while waiting for something that WILL NOT COME before they die. No, we should not wait for a double blind study which will cost lives, money, and the ability to get on with our lives vs trying what works for low cost, and virtually no downside.
Common sense is lost if this does not resonate.
Mario, it has not been shown to work. In fact, it does more harm than good.
WT – Did you get that info by watching HTN? (Half Truth News)
Mario didn’t say it worked, he said people should have the right to decide for themselves. Classic troll behaviour from a guy who whines about trolls. Followed by the accusation that HCQ does more harm than good. Odd that unless taken in higher than recommended doses it did little to no harm to millions upon millions of people pre-covid for decades it is now suddenly harmful . Classic trollspeak.
And yet one more bshit misdirection that convinces me that the writer has an agenda and doesn’t care about people’s rights to make their own choices, or if they live or die, as long as as their agenda is served.
@davidmhoffer: Thank you. By the way, I looked up articles on HCQ prior to 2019… and could not find one that spoke of it being dangerous. Quite to the contrary. So, the media, Dem’s and the LEFT in general all just did what they do… say the opposite of what is true. This is getting so damned consistent that I can now watch any news opinion pieces and derive the truth… at least since Trump took office.
davidmhoffer: “Mario didn’t say it worked.” Did you miss the caps?
I have seen rational educated comments from you, mario and others at this site. Here, on this subject, you find mario didn’t say something HE PUT IN CAPS! You guys are so caught up in your attacks on McGinley that you missed this? I have much respect for this site and the commenters here, but on this subject, you’ve lost perspective. His comments demonstrate that he is not a troll, calling him one is like dems calling Kenosha a peaceful protest. You are diminishing yourselves with this.
Paul Courtney: “HAS BEEN SHOWN” is all caps and what you are referring to. You just did a slight of hand, taking my careful use of words, and changing them to something else.
YOU ARE GUILTY of a strawman argument. I am not calling you a troll either.
mario: “HAS BEEN SHOWN TO WORK”. Why leave out the last two words? Lost, along with perspective?
I could have said treat “Works”, but I inserted more words to dilute that intentionally. treatment “HAS BEEN SHOWN TO WORK”. Do you understand words and sentence constructs or do you selectively choose to remove words and then slay them? You need to look inward Paul.
mario: Out of respect for all, I’ll leave the last word to you.
Why leave out the last two words?
Paul, why leave out the first three words? Clipping context to make a point just shows your point can’t stand without such manipulation. Not a good look on you my friend.
Hi Paul: I somehow got stuck into this waste of time argument, albeit, it’s a bit amusing .
Context is everything. My words were changed to make some point. John is correct in pointing that out.
John Endicott: I quoted five words, all in caps. First three and last two. Many here are better at math, but counting to five is not a challenge.
Not a good look for me? I can count to five. And I don’t diagnose Trump supporters with TDS. When you get it that wrong, doesn’t it give you pause?
William: You are either not listening, can’t read, won’t read or you are a troll with an ironic last name. None of these things are a compliment. I’ve read your posts, and quite frankly, you’re a waste of time.
RE: “Mario, it has not been shown to work. In fact, it does more harm than good.”
False. How many malaria patients has it killed?
William Teach is not spouting an opinion, he in fact is spouting a bald faced lie. I have not seen him respond by acknowledging his mistake, so I have to conclude that he is intentionally lying.
William, HCQ has been around and in use for *DECADES*. We know what the safe dosage levels are, what the expected side effects are, etc. It does *not* do more harm than good, if it did it would have been taken off the market *DECADES* ago and no one would be talking (and you wouldn’t be lying) about it today.
Thanks John: It’s ironic that the survival rate has been shown to be an order of magnitude greater than not using HCQ. It could be the most effective drug for an illness ever used, and people say and believe exactly the opposite.
It is so clear, yet otherwise intelligent people cling to their “beliefs’ with a religious fervor to the point they can and will not see.
March 19th Dr. Roy Spencer posted on his page that countries with malaria were relatively free of Covid-19 and HCQ was the common denominator. On the 19th President Trump talked about its promise. That night or maybe the next day, the media pooh poohed the drug. Politics in the USA is really ugly.
An up to date reexamination would be in order.
Those countries, except for Asian ones with cross reactive immunity and Africa ones where media ages in many countries are in the teens, are now moving up in terms of cases and deaths. Those in South America may be as bad as anywhere. The death rate in Brazil for example will almost certainly exceed that of the U.S.
The correlation was nonexistent to begin with, as was the rationale for thinking there was anything to look at there.
HCQ is not much used around the world, and almost nowhere do people take a malaria drug all the time as prophylaxis. It is considered and older and not very good choice, and some strains of the organism, in some places, have resistance to the drug anyway.
He also made assertions about overall death rates, as well as several other things, that did not hold up to even mild scrutiny at the time, and have now been flatly contradicted.
“HCQ is not much used around the world”
What’s not much?
HHS March 29 2020
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) today accepted 30 million doses of hydroxychloroquine sulfate donated by Sandoz, the Novartis generics and biosimilars division, and one million doses of Resochin (medical grade chloroquine phosphate) donated by Bayer Pharmaceuticals, for possible use in treating patients hospitalized with COVID-19 or for use in clinical trials. These and other companies may donate additional doses, and companies have ramped up production to provide additional supplies of the medication to the commercial market.
Forbes May 10th
Prescriptions in France have increased by as much as 7,000% in certain parts of the country since the pandemic began.
As reported by La Provence, a study looking at the 466 million French prescriptions written since the pandemic began in France, show a huge spike in doctors prescribing the drug. In the last week of March, for instance, over 10,000 people were prescribed hydroxychloroquine in Marseille alone.
Moscow Times April 17th 2020
Russia had authorized hospitals to use the drug in the fight against the contagion. That same day it received a large shipment from China, while five days later the pharmaceutical company Biocom announced it would produce 170,000 packs of the medicine.
Thursday’s decree instructs Russia’s national medical cardiology research center to distribute 68,600 packs of hydroxychloroquine donated by a Shanghai pharmaceutical company to hospitals across Russia for free.
“It is considered and older and not very good choice, and some strains of the organism, in some places, have resistance to the drug anyway.”
Some context from London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, Faculty of Infectious and Tropical Diseases, Disease Control Department, London.
A recent systematic review of studies shows that chloroquine still has an APR of 92.3% (95% CI: 90.3 — 94.2) at day 28 against P. vivax.
(Around 7.5 million clinical infections are caused by P. vivax every year.)
Treatment failures, however, have been on the rise over the past 5 years with the primary foci of resistance in Indonesia, Papua New Guinea, Timor-Leste and other parts of Oceania. Reports of chloroquine resistance have also come from India and South America.
Although chloroquine remains available at the community level in many settings, it is no longer recommended for the treatment of uncomplicated P. falciparum infection.
( It is responsible for around 50% of all malaria cases. P. falciparum is regarded as the deadliest parasite in humans, causing 405,000 deaths in 2018.)
For those interested here is a link to the work of the medical team in Marseille, I say team, because detractors of the Professor Raoult like to demonise him as some kind of lone wolf, conspiracist which is absurd, take a look at the number of professionals involved.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1477893920302817
Their conclusion:
Although this is a retrospective analysis, results suggest that early diagnosis, early isolation and early treatment of COVID-19 patients, with at least 3 days of HCQ-AZ lead to a significantly better clinical outcome and a faster viral load reduction than other treatments.
““HCQ is not much used around the world””
My comment was not regarding usage since the pandemic began, but in response to the suggestion put forth by Roy Spencer that many large countries did not have any COVID because they have malaria, with the implication (or maybe it was stated directly…I do not recall) that prior usage of malaria drugs in those places blocked the virus from spreading in those countries.
Travelers going to places with malaria from places without, typically take a malaria drug prior to arriving. But it does not seem to be the case than all the people who live in those places, are on lifelong malaria drug prophylaxis. Which is what one would have to think to suppose that malaria drugs were what is keeping the virus from infecting large numbers of people in some places.
CQ and HCQ are recognized as inferior to many other choices that are now readily available.
HCQ & CQ are widely available in countries with malaria. People who do not read The Lancet and are not targeted by Google with misinformation started taking on whatever little evidence of its effectiveness against COVID-19 existed.
“People who do not read The Lancet and are not targeted by Google with misinformation started taking on whatever little evidence of its effectiveness against COVID-19 existed.”
Wait…what?
Turkey’s COVID-19 Early Hydroxychloroquine Treatment Strategy Featured by Sky News
Early treatment with hydroxychloroquine: a country-based analysis
Ted Cruz Letter to FDA Says Hydroxychloroquine Restrictions May Be ‘Directly Costing Lives’
“Politics in the USA is really ugly.”
More properly: The Democrats, including the Leftwing Media in the USA are really ugly.
A recent survey showed 84 percent of those polled thought the Leftwing Media was the main source of the division in the United States.
“About three centuries ago, in 1640, a countess returning to Europe from Peru brought with her some bark from a cinchona tree, an infusion of which had been used by the native Indians to cure an attack of malaria from which she suffered. The value of the drug was established at once, and for nearly three hundred years the essential principles of cinchona bark–quinine and allied alkaloids–were practically without competition as remedies for malaria.” He went into the history of how important it was for WWII, and how it was refined to avoid a few problems.
From Asa C. Chandler, 1949, Introduction to Parasitology.
From 1989 [11th edition] Centennial Merck Index–…. Hydroxychloroquine, bunch of numbers and letters for the formula……Use in combination with cyclophohsphamide and azathioprine, q.q.v. in the treatment of rheumatoid arthritis……..Series of articles on clinical use…….THERAP CAT: Antimalarial; antirheumatic, lupus erythematosus suppressant. No mention of toxicity, but reassessment of use in arthritis.
We have regressed!
Because Medicine has become Big Business and Politisized as well.
Here is something to watch. I am just listening to Tucker Carlson tonight. He is telling ta story of how The WHO director has now stated that what really needs to be done to fight the CCP flu is that the world has to address global warming. Dr Tedros then says “We will not, we cannot go back to the way things were”. It makes me wonder about the total picture. Was this outbreak an actual outright attack to gain extra controls over mush of the world, especially the Western world? This WHO director is now putting global warming front and center as a necessary element of fighting the CCP virus. … https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e2ijXEgVbp8
It’s about 15 minutes in where this part is discussed by Carlson.
“We will not, we cannot go back to the way things were” – OH YES WE WILL. Over your dead body you say? Hmmmm. Well you are a war criminal so it’d be best for you to be on the run.
Another one from him was that it would be with us for 2 more years. He has problems reading data and graphs as well it would seem.
Everyone knows WHO is a political entity first.
Who cares what they say?
Is it surprising they try to roll up their old con with current events?
Making more of it than that is just daydreaming, IMO.
Talk is cheap…any idiot to say anything.
China controls WHO that is why the world should care. China is terrible and bad for this planet.
Let me rephrase that:
Who takes what WHO says as the Gospel truth?
Maybe the same people who think each of the countries on UN Council on Human Rights is dedicated to insuring everyone around the world does not get any of their rights infringed upon, or that, and who think the IPCC is is dedicated to good science?
“This WHO director is now putting global warming front and center as a necessary element of fighting the CCP virus”
Let’s see: Who would benefit the most from promoting the continuation of the destruction of the economies of the Western Democracies in their attempts to control the Earth’s weather?
The obvious answer is the Chicoms. Here’s Dr. Tedros helping out his paymasters again. Anyone who listens to this man has to be a fool.
Lots of arguing over hydroxychloroquine but nobody worried about a process that normally takes 10-15 years is now streamlined to just 1 or 2 years and some, maybe most Western Governments will effectively require their citizens to get the jab, even though those same gov’s have signed immunity clauses with the vaccine suppliers?
“Lots of arguing over hydroxychloroquine but nobody worried about a process that normally takes 10-15 years is now streamlined to just 1 or 2 years and some”
Technology advances. In the past, it used to take a much longer time to cross the Atlantic ocean than it does now.
Just because the process has been sped up doesn’t necessarily mean the process is flawed.
In the meantime, take the HCQ treatment if you get the Wuhan virus.
“Technology advances. In the past, it used to take a much longer time to cross the Atlantic ocean than it does now.
Just because the process has been sped up doesn’t necessarily mean the process is flawed.
In the meantime, take the HCQ treatment if you get the Wuhan virus.”
Vaccine technology has advanced so far that it no longer needs animal testing and all those additional years before use in a human population? OK if you are so sure of the safety of these rushed vaccines then take it but it should not be forced on others.
In Australia, doctors cannot prescribe HCQ for Covid and our Gov has pre-ordered 25million vaccine shots which they intend to force on the population.
What makes you think there is no testing going on? just because they cut a lot of red tape and expediated the steps in the process doesn’t mean they’re actually skipping any of the steps. If they would, we’d already be doing like Russia and distributing the vaccines already.
You shouldn’t look at how long it use to take and just assume it couldn’t possibly ever be any quicker. A lot of the time that it use to take was spent jumping through beaurocratic hoops rather than actual useful activity in developing/testing the medicine. Getting rid of time and money wasting red tape is a good thing.
I’d be surprised if this work will appear in a ‘leading journal’ shortly. Too many pseudo-science gatekeepers around who will go to great length to find fault with it.
Mortality in Sweden (population about 1*10^7) during 2015 to August 2020:
compiled from scb.se data.
Surely, Sweden has seen more than twice the excess mortality during spring of 2020 (cyan) compared to the 2018 (green) season.
However, time will tell if the 2020 year-end result will be early the same as 2018, where Sweden didn’t freak out.
This does not say much about HCQ/Zn, which has been sort of on and off in Sweden, it just to say that this season’s infections have been blown out of proportion, a bit parallel to Catastrophic Climate Change Politics.
Mods,
I think I have some comments in the moderation bin for using the k word, and maybe for more than two included links on some.
Oops! The Supplementary Materials:
https://defyccc.com/wp-content/uploads/Summary.xlsx
https://defyccc.com/wp-content/uploads/Hydroxychloroquine-Actual-Use-USA-Attachment.zip
All I know is that if I was to find myself infected with covid 19, I would have my doctor put me on HCQ with zpack + zinc. I would be stupid not to.
Would your doctor welcome a COVID19 patient with open arms? My doctor would tell me to go to a hospital. Hospitals just love to be told by patients how to treat them.
I hired my doctor, she works for me, even if indirectly. If she won’t give me what I want I would find another doctor.
If your doc won’t prescribe it, an alternative recommended by Dr. Zelenko is questing, available from Amazon.
one more thing, around 7:30 in this video, this doctor claims HCQ is a Zn ionophore. So do all doctors who prescribe it and so do all studies where they prove it works to reduce replication and prevent hospitalization. And I used the word prove correctly. So don’t let the other folks lie through obfuscation.
If your doc won’t prescribe it, Dr. Zelenko suggests using quercetin instead. It’s a long-available zinc-promoting supplement that can be bought on Amazon.
Yes, and ANY health food store. Please see what this “MedCram” doctor does… his prescription explained is at 1:30 into this video. Anyone who says there’s no evidence should watch about 5 or 6 of these videos. If anyone wants, I will provide specific links.
Oh – and PS… yes, he prescribes quercetin in this video…
From the sound of things, the HCQ-haters would rather see a loved one die, or die themselves than be proven wrong about HCQ.
Cobb
Many people see the world as black and white. Therefore, if you see HCQS as being the greatest thing since the polio sugar cube or smallpox vaccine, it is understandable that you might automatically view those who disagree with your view as being “HCQ-haters.”
Because I have been one of the more vocal critics of the blind support for HCQS, let me state my position clearly. I do NOT hate HCQS. I acknowledge that it may even provide some benefit, but I think that the evidence is weak and there are many contradictory studies about its efficacy, which the true believers rationalize away as being done wrong, despite a dearth of of proper studies to define the right way. There is conjecture that HCQS works because it behaves as an “ionophore;” although, I have not seen any studies that confirm that. We know nothing about what the optimum dosage is; we only know what has been reported to reputedly work in ‘cocktails.’ The problem is that supporters claim that is shouldn’t be used on those most in need of a cure. The ones for whom it is recommended will almost certainly clear the infection without intervention! That doesn’t meet my expectation of something that “works.” When these threads started, there were irresponsible claims that HCQS was perfectly safe. One sees that less frequently now, but there are still some who haven’t done their homework and think that because people who are sensitive to HCQS, and stop using it, and don’t therefore ‘dye’ from it, that it has a spotless record. I have previously posted links to medical sites that address the well-known side-effects and contraindications, before the heart problems were reported.
I find it curious that of the approximately three-dozen drugs approved for other medical conditions, which have been claimed to have utility against COVID-19, there are NO champions promoting ANY of them here! ALL the support is for something that Trump promoted. Some have complained that it is because of a conspiracy by Big Pharma to promote an expensive drug, remdesivir. However, most of the other three-dozen drugs are, like HCQS, been in use for a long time and are not that expensive. So, why is it that the focus is on something that Trump promoted, but doesn’t really have efficacy for those most in need? I think that some of you need to do some serious soul searching, particularly if you consider yourselves scientists.
Clyde: you wrote: [“I do NOT hate HCQS. I acknowledge that it may even provide some benefit, but I think that the evidence is weak and there are many contradictory studies about its efficacy, which the true believers rationalize away as being done wrong, despite a dearth of of proper studies to define the right way.”]
Seriously? You dismiss cogent discussion about HCQ by calling people whom you disagree with “true believers”. You then say don’t hate HCQ. Finally, you go on to say that you “believe” stuff without providing any specificity whatsoever. Just handwaving. Read your quote and decide for yourself whether you are projecting on people much better informed than yourself!
Mario, it’s obvious, on this issue, the TDS is strong with Clyde.
“I find it curious that of the approximately three-dozen drugs approved for other medical conditions, which have been claimed to have utility against COVID-19, there are NO champions promoting ANY of them here! ”
There are three search-matches in this thread for “ivermectin.” I’ve posted comments about it in prior WUWT threads. Here’s what I posted on 8/18:
[Ivermectin was] mentioned in this July JoNova thread:
http://joannenova.com.au/2020/07/more-cheap-potential-covid-treatments-ivermectin-saves-50/
“Coronavirus may leave a trail of benefits in its wake. Who knew that there were so many cheap antivirals around? Will people get fed up with the limited choices on offer next time there is a quarantine?
“Ivermectin, like hydroxychloroquine is a kind of superdrug — in the sense of being in worldwide mass use. Some 3.7 billion doses are estimated to have been given since its approval. It has been called the Japanese Wonder Drug. It’s the farm drench, a head lice treatment, and works against worm, mites and ticks too.
“It was estimated to reduce viral loads in vitro massively but most people didn’t think it would work at lower safe doses. Then Bangladeshi doctors claim it was “astounding”. Last month US tests suggest that it reduced deaths by 40%. (Rajter)
“These are all every preliminary results. More studies are promised for Ivermectin. Especially in Peru, where a grassroots movement of Doctors has ensured it will be used.
“A US clinical trial of the drug ivermectin found that it reduced the mortality rate of COVID-19 patients by 40%.”
SEE ALSO:
“No guts, no glory” 15 August 2020 AU The Spectator Australia Magazine
Does an Australian gastro legend hold the key to curing Covid?
REBECCA WEISSER
“Dr Kylie Wagstaff announced on 3 April that ivermectin, a drug that’s been around for almost 50 years and kills everything from head lice and scabies to the parasites that cause river blindness, also kills Sars-Cov-2 virus in test tubes.
Since then, doctors using ivermectin have saved thousands of people around the world who were sick with Covid, even many close to death; the mortality rates for those on ventilators dropped from 81 per cent to 39 per cent. As for people who have just been infected with the virus, there is an almost 100 per cent cure rate. And it is also working as a prophylactic, protecting healthcare workers.
Yet, other than Borody, almost nobody in Australia is treating patients with ivermectin. Why? At first glance, it seems inexplicable. Borody’s triple therapy combines ivermectin with a bog-standard — pardon the pun — antibiotic and zinc. The safety profile is so well-known that there is virtually no risk. There are already 33 clinical trials running around the world. The results so far are uniformly positive. Borody is running a randomised, controlled, double-blind trial in the US, ….
….
it’s not just ‘hydroxy hatred’ that is a dogma on the Left; merely to seek a cure is, as a fellow at the Australian Defence Force Academy told the ABC, ‘an individualistic solution’ which appeals to those on the right, in opposition to ‘more left-leaning values around social responsibility.’ It’s a ‘quick fix, a magic cure’ for the ‘problem’ of the virus, he says, not ‘a social solution that implies we have to work together’ — with government —‘to address larger, more complex, and interrelated issues in society to battle the disease.”
https://app.spectator.com.au/2020/08/no-guts-no-glory/pugpig_index.html
““A US clinical trial of the drug ivermectin found that it reduced the mortality rate of COVID-19 patients by 40%.””
This is an interesting usage of the term “clinical trial”.
This was another one of those retrospective cohort “studies”.
It was not done by the doctors in a hospital system evaluating a consecutive series of their patients, like in the Henry Ford study. That one was problematic despite being well documented, and a consecutive list of patients over several months.
Gold standard studies are ongoing, but there is reason to be skeptical here: The concentration of the drug that killed half of the virus in vitro, was a concentration something like 35 times higher than what could be obtained with the maximum safe dose in a person, and there also appears to be good reason to doubt that the drug would ever make it to infected cells in the respiratory epithelium.
It works on parasites basically by pouring it on them, or in the case of intestinal ones, by swallowing it where they both comingle in the lumen of the gut.
Here are links to the “study” and to some other work which takes a nonjudgmental but skeptical look at the drug as a therapy for COVID.
The paper contains numerous typos of a sort which a tenth grader ought to catch before handing in a term paper. But the authors do appear to be doctors that work at those hospitals, although I only looked up the first one.
https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.06.06.20124461v2
But unfortunately:
https://www.news-medical.net/news/20200427/Ivermectin-alone-not-useful-in-treating-COVID-19.aspx
This is again a drug which is found to inhibit a range of viruses in vitro, and has been studied in years prior for clinical efficacy.
None has been found.
Just in case anyone misses the point here: There is an entire thick encyclopedia of drugs that appear to work for something in lab tests, but do not work in live animals. There are even a long list of them that work in some small animals but not in people. This is why only one in 5000 new drug prospects ever makes it from the lab bench to a pharmacy shelf, even though every one of those 5000 work well enough in lab tests to spend a bunch of money looking at it more carefully.
An in vitro effect is a reason to do more research, not proof something is a miracle drug.
It is kind of hard to look past the whole thing with the concentration and the tissue specificity.
“It was not done by the doctors in a hospital system evaluating a consecutive series of their patients, like in the Henry Ford study”
I should have said “It appears it WAS done…”
I found something very ironic in the ivermectin study text.
The people who did not get ivermectin, who were found to have a far higher fatality rate, were far more likely to have gotten HCQ and Azithromycin.
Yikes!
Here, page 8:
https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.06.06.20124461v2.full.pdf+html
4:1 death rate … non-HCQ countries to HCQ countries.
Poorly compiled data, but 4:1 may be tough to overcome by getting rid of the bad data.
A doctor once told me that “Every drug is a poison”.
Clyde obviously doesn’t need/take many drugs or doesn’t read the pamphlets that come with them.
Is HQC dangerous in rare instances for some people? Yes. But some of the drugs I take for various medical conditions are even more so without proper screening and monitoring. One puts me at high risk of internal bleeding or bleeding out after a kitchen accident. Another can make my lupus worse. Still another puts me at risk of becoming diabetic. And don’t get me started on the immunosuppressant.
HCQ is probably the safest drug I take.
Clyde you whole rant there boils done to orange man bad so HCQ bad. If Trump hadn’t of mentioned it, you’d never have has a word to say about HCQ. You really do need to check you TDS, it’s getting tedious.
Hi John: I think Trump was a magical and serendipitous scapegoat for the LEFT, which are being used as useful idiots, but that the real drive is that HCQ and Zn could very much collapse the industry that provides cold and FLU relief which includes all the OTC symptom relievers, and the drugs for bacterial and viral infections… and vaccines.
We’ve already heard that a vaccine could be needed to be taken regularly in order to survive Covid 19 and open up. The whole world would be convinced that they needed a patented product or else.
You guys are not only pathological, you seem to not actually read anything people write.
Clyde and I have both been Trump supporters since before he was elected.
I was and remain one of his biggest supporters.
There were threads in 2015 and 2016 were I was one of only a few people here who supported Trump.
I wonder what we will find if we look back at who you two were supporting during the primary season in those years?
Mr. Hoffer above makes a point, that the existence of “clinical trials” designed to fail (to make Trump look bad) is appalling, and a sign. I happen to agree, though I don’t find it overwhelming evidence to support HCQ, just some food for thought. Now for another example- commenters who warn HCQ is not entirely safe (Clyde Spencer) or not clinically proven to work (McGinley) are branded TDS. This, in spite of the fact that both profess support for Trump. The branders (I repeat, I’ve seen good comments over time from them) look like fools in this. At this site, you either refute McGinley and Spencer (good luck telling him he DIDN’T get ill) or don’t bother. Throwing TDS around puts you with LLoydo.
Paul, mealy mouthed Turmp support is a figleaf that does not negate their TDS behavior. Both posters have numerous times brought up Trumps “medical advice” (Trump gave no such medical advice, anyone that claims otherwise is exhibiting TDS behavior) as a canard against HCQ/people saying anything positive about HCQ. You just make yourself look foolish defending their TDS on this issue. Defending TDS just puts you in the same TDS category as them. It’s not a good look on you.
I wonder what we will find if we look back at who you two were supporting during the primary season in those years?
I’ll gladly tell you exactly who I was and wasn’t supporting back then. All you needed do was ask. (and ask you would have had to do as I don’t think I made any posts, at least certainly not here a WUWT, about it so you can look and look all you want for “dirt” to make you feel better about your HCQ TDS, but you’d be looking in vain):
I was not supporting Hillary. I was in support of anyone but Hillary. Of all the Republican nominees I probably liked Ted Cruz the best but would have been happy with any of the not-Hillary nominees, so really wasn’t actively “supporting” any particular one (not even Ted) – my state votes too late in the primary season for me to get invested in any particular primary candidate as it’s basically all over before I get a chance to vote.
And I admit I didn’t take Trump seriously at first, though I had nothing against him even then. And when Trump won the nomination, I was fully in support of him as he was not Hillary. Yes, my vote was mostly a vote against Hillary (as someone who has to go through annual security refreshers as part of my job, something she herself would have been required to go through, just her personal e-mail server scandal alone is appalling, inexcusable, and reason enough to never allow her near the white house – I’d lose my job at the minimum, and possibly go to jail if I’d done what she did – I’d certainly never receive a “promotion” to the highest position in the company after it). call it HDS if you want, but I’m damn glad Hillary isn’t in the white house – and Trump has turned out to be a whole lot better than I would have given him credit for back in 2015. He’s accomplished more than I believe any of the other 2016 Republican hopefuls would ever have done.
Mr. Endicott: You are correct that Trump didn’t give medical advice, and I challenge you to quote from a Spencer or McGinley, or retract above slander that they posted such a statement. You simply make that up.
You seem keen to diagnose TDS in me, too; what a surprise. That’s three. So diagnose two more, and you’ve learned to go all the way up to five. You may actually learn something.
doctalkgo.com (866-403-8714) and speakwithanmd.com (855-503-2657) might be able to prescribe Hydroxychloroquine-based treatment for COVID-19 symptoms in a tele-consulting, and even to have the medications delivered.
omariasinelabeconcepta.wordpress.com has a list of some local doctors who might prescribe HCQ-based treatment.
Docking study of chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine interaction with RNA binding domain of nucleocapsid phospho-protein – an in silico insight into the comparative efficacy of repurposing antiviral drugs
Seems, HCQ isn’t bad at all 😀
As long as nobody cristallises it or does Cryo-EM it’s just another computer generated model.
Seems like we may learn something from the empirical evidence from France and Switzerland:
http://www.francesoir.fr/societe-sante/covid-19-hydroxychloroquine-works-irrefutable-proof
France Soir does very good work !
Not the first time I realise the quality, also the French articles I read were top !
I suggest that everyone here research “WHO” Dr Tedros is, where he is from and how & why he became the head of WHO.
I quote, “As The New American reported shortly after his tenure began, Tedros, who has no medical degree but got the top UN job with fervent backing from Communist China, is an actual communist with a long pedigree in the movement. Before taking up his perch at the WHO, Tedros was most prominent for his government posts in a tyrannical regime, and for his key role in leading the murderous communist organization known as the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF). This ethno-Marxist terror group has declared war on freedom and other ethnic groups within Ethiopia. And Tedros played a major role, serving as a top member of the TPLF’s Politburo Central Committee, according to multiple news reports.
The U.S. government previously designated the Marxist group as a terrorist organization for its murders, kidnappings, terror attacks, and more. Citing at least a dozen terror attacks on private citizens, religious figures, private property, non-governmental organizations, journalists, and other targets spanning more than three decades, the Global Terror Database continues to list it as such. TPLF also joined forces with other mass-murdering Marxist-Leninist parties and formed the “Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front” (EPRDF), an alliance that today rules the nation despite having been formally disbanded last year.”
https://www.thenewamerican.com/world-news/africa/item/35325-marxist-un-who-boss-must-be-put-on-trial-critics-say
The German Society for Pathology published a pre-print press release of a total of 156 autopsies of people dying with SARS-CoV-2:
https://www.pathologie.de/?eID=downloadtool&uid=2019
Their conclusion was that 86% died from not just with it.
The average age was 70y which is 10y less than the normal life expectancy.
Highest co-morbidity was cardiovascular preconditions.
Whoever might be concerned about the low number, well, the researchers are as well and demand more funding to do more autopsies. Autopsies are in fact an underfunded and endangered art so it’s not the just the usual screaming for more money.
So far, as of the date/time stamp of this comment, Nicholas McGinley has penned approx. 10,269 words from underneath some dreary bridge in the middle of Mount Doom.
The more you know!
When people implode, some of them spew words… but they do not see themselves as lazy because they pump out so much stuff.
One thing though, he’s not dumb, just unable to be reasoned with. When he loses a debate, he attacks the person’s character by making up lies about them. That’s unacceptable and speaks volumes to their own character.
He sounded educated, but I could not figure out what his expertise was. He literally accused me of doxing him, when I asked what were his credentials… because he came out of nowhere but said he had posting for a long time. Then I found out he was Menicholas and was hiding from someone else who doxed him. I can understand that, but I was by no means trying to dox him and he knows it.
He also claimed I posted things (fabrications) instead of just quoting the truth of what he had a problem with from my posts. When people have to be dishonest by lying about what others say, that’s defamation. If they attack what I say by quoting me, I am fine with that.
That’s a bad apple me thinks.
Gratz Mario, a sagacious comment in lustrous prose. In the future, I’ll be borrowing that, i.e., with your permission?
🙂
Hi Sycomputing. Use away! I will provide a link to the phrase where clicks generate 0.5 cents.
The thoughts just came to my lobe… and well, I guess I spewed a bit too.
He came “out of the nowhere” to discredit HCQ and to promote Remdesevir. As Remdesivir showed to be a squib load, he stopped to promote it and started claiming x other existing drugs.
His expertise seems to be in chemistry, as far as I could realise.
Interesting. I wonder what his thing was when he put on the Menicholas costume… I recall the name but don’t remember paying much attention to him then.
I tell you, the best thing that came out of the HCQ debates, for me, is my lungs and sinus health changed. I no longer get that feeling that I am getting close to a sore throat, with that brittle pre-cold feeling. I spent all weekend at the race track coaching 4 students, with terrible air quality overlapping the usual race car exhaust. I never felt cleaner and healthier. There is definitely something to small Zn with Quercetin and NAC that tips the scales for me.
So now I am looking forward to cold and flu season.
At some point, no intelligent person would ignore the science surrounding HCQ and Zn for the Covid 19. I cannot wait for the intellectual shills to be outed for what/who they are. They belong in the same camp as the cabal behind Russia-Gate.
Nicholas McGinley seems to be part / member of the Gilead team the way he exposed himself at it’s best.
Twenty-one billion reasons to discredit hydroxychloroquine
Now primarily a marketing machine to sell drugs of dubious benefit, this industry uses its wealth and power to co-opt every institution that might stand in its way, including the U.S. Congress, the Food and Drug Administration, academic medical centers, and the medical profession itself.
sy: That’s some pretty good counting! Mr. Endicott should be in touch.
To paraphrase Einstein, You count 10,000+ words, you’d do better if you could find one that’s false. And tell it to McGinley. We might learn something in the exchange. You’re complaint has a number with no substance.
Well several months ago, McGinley lied about thing I did and said. When pointed out, he made up more lies. All it took were cuts and pastes. He’s not an honest man. No please quit defending the nonsense and get on with the science.
I intended below to post here.
*smile* I read posts from older to newer in my email notifications 🙂
Normally I do not advocate in favor of law suites. But now I would very much like to see a major firm put on a class action against Big Pharma forcing BP to prove HCQ does not work. I live in Hawaii where it seems the same day Trump Mentioned HCQ in a news briefing, Hawaii banned its use and is standing firm even though Covid19 new cases are soaring. The state is on the verge of Bankruptcy due to a total shut down of tourism, people are getting sick more quickly , thousands are out of work and David Ige the governor is more concerned about being anti Trump as he is about helping citizens defend against Covid.
Agreed… and my “suite” would be stocked with quercetin until HCQ was available. But, I think you meant “suit”
mario, with all due respect, something a few months ago would not be included in the 10,000+ words here. If you are speaking of him saying you were “doxing” him, I followed that. You folks were lacing into him pretty harshly AND looking into his backround. He used a pseudonym in the past. Wasn’t that to protect himself because he supported Trump, and needed the anonymity? That would be ironic.
Claiming he was being doxed would be overreaction, not a lie. I recall thinking at the time, mario seemed a reasonable guy, why is he jumping on this as a “lie”? Over HCQ, for crissake. I don’t think I stuck my nose in back then, but look at this latest- Krishna says he’s a big pharma plant, no evidence. Please step back and consider, how is that different from the CliSci fraudsters who say skeptics get Big Oil $, no evidence? How is that different mario, krishna, endicott, all of you. Yeah, I’m spun up now.
Hi Paul: You’re right… I am just miffed by the terrible things he said about me way back then.
Originally, I looked up to him because he sounded informed and knew stuff I did not. I asked some questions, not sarcastically, thinking he was open minded. It appeared that he thought I was a terrible hypocrite and he wrote a long scathing note about me — but not to me. I just happened to come across it. It actually hurt my feelings.
My response to Nicholas was, “What did I do?” I then asked if he “confused me with someone else?”
No answer for weeks maybe. To this day the only reason I could guess at is that others were attacking him, and I must have written an opinion on the evidence of HCQ’s mechanisms and he saw my opinions in the mix.
I rarely ever use ad hominems or attack people. When I do, I apologize.
Paul: You are the kind of person I can learn from, even though I may disagree. Nicholas gets emotional and said some horrible things about me but not to me, and completely unprovoked.
Thank you for taking the time!
mario: Kind words acknowledged, agreed.
That means a lot! Thank you Paul. A true gentleman are you.
@paul
You won’t or can’t read correctly:
I said:
Somewhat different, isn’t it?
In the nicest possible way, I think we should be precise in our language. Mis-quotes are OK, but contentious misquotes are like that telephone game.
Krishna: Gilead is not a pharma company?
Please explain to me what you meant when you said, without cite, that “he seems to be part of” the team of a pharmaceutical company.
Read the complete comments of the above mentioned 10,269 words by NMG and the link I provided.
PS
And read that again
@Mario
I can’t dox (if I undertand that right) him as I have nothing else as his comments here at WUWT, speaking for themselves.
I agree with you and neither can or neither would I dox. I do not think that you were doing that either.
Sorry if I implied that!
Did I say that ?
Krishna: The “21 billion reasons” link seems to confirm that Gilead is pharma. Big pharma. So you did say it. He’s on the team of big pharma. But you have nothing connecting McGinley to Gilead.
I’ve answered your question, but your “explanation” missed. Now to mine- how is this different from unsubstantiated accusations hurled at skeptics that they are on the “Big Oil” team?
Moderator, I’m sorry but I’m gonna keep calling out this bs until you do.
Hi Paul: I never want to get you on my bad side 🙂
I’ve saved up a dozen apologies for when you get on my case, if that day comes.
😉
@Paul
If you follow NMB comments over the last 4 to 5 month where he discredited HCQ and praised Gileads Remdesivir he his following the agenda of the Gilead lobby at 100% as described in the link “21 billion reasons”. Thats why I said, he seems to be part of the Gilead team, you got the picture?
I make not an review of all comments of the person in question because you are to lazy to look yourself.
Could it even be you are trolling?
Hi Krishna: I think we are aligned on evidence for HCQ and the bad science applied to discredit it.
I took your verbiage as rhetorical and thought you meant NMG is acting in such a way based on his defense of novel unproven costly drugs vs cheap, safe and available drugs that have shown much higher benefit.
We can argue based on the merits and falts, and do not need to make such statements.
@paul PS
I didn’t say Gilead is not big pharma, you must read and understand, and not troll, ok ?
@Mario
What else ? 😀
He exposed himself in this way, his comments since HCQ surged here at WUWT allow that conclusion.
I understand… but that does not matter. The facts surrounding HCQ are damning enough in my opinion. Plus, I do not want to get close to the appearance of doxing anyone 😉
krishna: You smeared McGinley as being on Gilead’s team, then tried to be obtuse for a few posts. I called you on it, and…..
I’ve been following all these posts on hcq because I’m hoping for clinical trials that show results not because Trump, not to tell McGinley “I told you so”* but because if I catch it I want to take something that will help. This site brings real scientists who comment on so many science subjects, best info on the whole damn net. He has posted good info on this, I’ve read his stuff and yours. I have learned here that a few things may work, but it’s early, and there’s more anecdote than lab-dote (I just made that up!). He’s a lab guy, doesn’t respect anecdote. Doesn’t make him corrupt, and you should respect other commenters here, if you did you wouldn’t smear him.
If I can follow all that, I can follow your few comments above. If following your posts and calling a smear a smear makes me a troll, well…. Problem for you is, you’ve now admitted to the smear, basing it on nothing more than his comments here. I’ve followed his comments closely, 10,000+, he said nothing to justify your smear or whatever vague thing you try to shift to in your next comment. Please prove me wrong.
Side note: And not related to the dispute.
The main problem with these arguments on the efficacy of HCQ can be defined as acknowledging the following which we should all criticize and then from that standpoint lay out our thoughts:
First, we should admit that there are several layers of medical “evidence” that indicate that something works. The so called Gold Standard is RCTs, albeit with levels even above that such as Systematic Review and Meta-Analyses! Though science attempts to have precision, the lines of distinction between these layers of evidence can be blurry in my opinion.
That does not mean that levels of evidence below RCTs are not “evidence”, and as such we have many retrospective and Cohort studies surrounding HCQ, HCQ and Zn, and numerous permutations of other substances used, and sometimes tracked with multiple regression. But I digress.
At some point, humans have been able to discern the “evidence” and use judgement to determine risk of danger of the treatment vs rick of danger not using the treatment. Waiting is a choice… and so is death from waiting.
In conclusion:
I have seen a torturing of the language (from smart people) so that what I write above becomes not only lost, but perhaps used to misinform, whether or not it is intentional.
When the word “evidence” is treated as a binary word, argument follows and we take our eyes off the ball.
I trust you will not find fault with my thoughts, but look forward to your corrective criticism!
“””
The author declares no competing interest.
No funding was provided for this work.
“””
So none of these articles were paid for? No speeches or other engagements? This looks like a profession to me.
https://muckrack.com/leo-goldstein/articles
I suspect the author is so committed to his conclusions that he would not recognize evidence against hydroxychloroquine if it kicked him in the head.
https://twin-cities.umn.edu/news-events/early-treatment-mild-covid-19-university-minnesota-trial-shows-hydroxychloroquine-has-no
Safety of Hydroxychloroquine among Outpatient Clinical Trial Participants for COVID-19
Caleb P Skipper was funded in other HCQ study by the Fogarty International Center, these are related to Gilead.
Fogarty Global Health Fellows Coordinating Center
No further comment necessary….