The politicization of hydroxychloroquine
Here’s a comprehensive article on the subject. I think it’s especially good in its critique of the claim that randomized control trials are the best and only valid standard for medical research, particularly with a disease such as COVID.
An excerpt about how the media used and misused the studies that seemed to be indicating that the drug had bad effects:
On April 21, the American Veteran’s Administration released a study, funded by the National Institute of Health. The authors pointed out that this was not a randomized clinical trial, there was not a “group matched design,” and it was not peer reviewed. It was a retrospective analysis of patients who did and did not get HCQ, in all U.S. Veterans medical centers until April…
They reported that 158 patients got standard management (neither HCL or Azithromycin), 97 patients received HCQ, and 113 patients received a combo of HCQ and Azithromycin. They followed these patients and found that of those who got standard care, 11% died, of those who got HCQ, 28% died, and of those who got HCQ and Azithromycin, 22% died.
In other words, one would be forgiven for thinking that the people who got HCQ were much more likely to die, according to this study—if the groups that got HCQ and those who didn’t were similar.
But wait: “[H]ydroxychloroquine, with or without azithromycin, was more likely to be prescribed to patients with more severe disease, as assessed by baseline ventilatory status and metabolic and hematologic parameters,” wrote the authors (emphasis is mine). The point should be clear: The HCQ patients were sicker and were more likely to get the drug as a last resort—just the thing Raoult had warned against. It was given too late to work.
This same limitation—conducting a study where doctors were more likely to give HCQ to sicker patients and then comparing how they did with the less sick group that didn’t get it—would be repeated in several studies over the next months.
You’ve heard of cherry-picking evidence or results, when advocating for an argument, or product or invention. What followed was a torrent of what could best be called “rotten cherry picking”—media, politicos, and rivals, scouring the internet for any sign that HCZ would kill masses of people.
I had already been following the research on hydroxychloroquine from the start, even before Trump expressed optimism about it and the media decided that such encouraging news at the hands of Trump could not be allowed to stand. I later read that VA study described above in real time, and it immediately – and I mean immediately – struck me that it was so deeply flawed as to be meaningless. All it really signified was that already-very-sick COVID patients tend to die more often than those who were not already at death’s door. Duuuhhh! How obvious to anyone with even a grade-school understanding (or what used to be grade-school understanding; I suppose it isn’t anymore) of the scientific method.
And yet – and yet – I rarely if ever saw a single MSM article mention that little detail. It was not only frustrating, it was infuriating to see the important omission and watch the eager and nearly-gleeful MSM and Democrats push the story that people given the drug were being tremendously harmed by it. I saw this sort of thing happen over and over and over again: studies that used the wrong dose, or the wrong drug, or who gave it at the wrong time, to the wrong population, and every one was reported on with omissions about those facts by those who wanted to discredit the drug.
Medical research – or any research with human subjects – is difficult to do for a host of reasons. Some research is extremely poorly designed or even fraudulent, but more of it just suffers from the obstacles inherent in all such efforts. But the reporting on COVID and drugs (or any and every angle on COVID) has become so extraordinarily politicized that it is unreliable, and one has to read the research without the MSM middleman to come to any valid conclusions at all. What’s more, most people seem to lack either the desire to do that and/or the time or the ability. And that’s what the MSM counts on.
The result is that their bias has probably cost many lives at the same time they pretend to be righteously saving them. Nice job, folks.
[ADDENDUM: See also this.]
We just have to put up with constant BS, that’s what this is all about. One branch of the federal government (NIH) funding another branch (VA) to generate a BS report.
How it works is this: the VA authors applied to NIH for funding of this pseudo-research. Said funding included their salaries; such NIH grants always do. So NIH threw money away for useless clinical data-gathering to mislead the tax-paying public.
Never mind for a moment that, overall, the quality of patient care in the VA system is rotten. I saw this on my VA rotations in NC as a trainee in the 1970s. My MD daughter witnessed the same clinical crappiness in Boston (a generation later!).
VA secretaries stop taking phone calls at 4 pm, because they get off work at 4:30. Did then, do now. I guess they are “non-essential”.
The Deep State at work.
I have mentioned before but this is a relevant place to repeat it. I have a college friend who worked in big pharma his whole life. He was forever going on about how the negative effects were not known and we need to knock it off until lengthy tests were done.
Thing is, he KNEW that his employer and other pharmas had been shipping supertankerloads of this stuff to the tropics for sixty years. It’s OTC anti malarial in the tropics. Take one a week.
He took it in SEA.
It’s frequently prescribed for folks going to the tropics.
It’s been used for RA and lupus for decades.
He knew all this and he lied.
One of the characteristics of a double blind test is you have the placebo group and you have the group getting the new whatchamacallit At the end, you hope a lot more people in the placebo group died.
With HCL, there’s no need for a placebo group. Negative effects are known and known to be infinitesimal except for known pre existing issues.
Nope. Lengthy trials.
I suppose there are more obvious cases of TDS making somebody into….whatever the hell this guy became, but it’s hard to think of one.
It isn’t just HCQ and COVID.
It is all of science these days, especially global warming. The effect of insane global warming policies is resulting no air conditioning during record heat in California: http://www.mikesmithenterprisesblog.com/2020/08/i-feel-sorry-for-people-of-california.html
We have lost the Judeo-Christian ethic in the United States (“Thou Shall Not Bear False Witness”) which is the root problem of scientific fraud and media propaganda. I despair we will be able to fix it.
See also:
https://www.palmerfoundation.com.au/irrefutable-proof-that-hydroxychloroquine-works-francesoir/
I think it was the bogus Lancet story, while later retracted, was the narrative needed to drive a stake through HCQ.
That story, and the VA study gave the FDA cover to withdraw it’s EUA (Emergency Use Authorization). At the same time WHO stopped it’s Solidarity trial using HCQ and began pressuring countries around the world to prohibit its use. WHO reinstated HCQ in it’s Solidarity trial later.
India, the country that produces lots of HCQ, was been under pressure to ban HCQ. So far their medical community has resisted calls to ban it’s use– which is as a preventative for health care workers.
There seems to be a common belief that drug companies selling expensive patented drugs are behind this seeming coordinated attack on HCQ, a drug that costs 60 cents a dose.
There was a University of Minnesota trial that were also used to justify it’s ban in the US, even though it actually showed positive results for HCQ. It was deemed to have failed because it didn’t show “substantial” benefit.
That study, about 800 people, was carried out completely on line. The participants were mailed either HCQ or a placebo, and then reported by email the effects they were feeling, in terms of recovery. All the participants had come in contact with a positive covid person, though they were never tested.
All in the name of Science.
Disgusting.
Disgusting indeed.
Along with the stuff from Neo’s post and the comments above, there are the (invariably Dem) Governors who threaten doctors who might be considering the use of HCQ for treatment or as a prophylactic.
I asked for an Rx for HCQ from my doctor just before traveling to Ohio from CA late last month. There are no direct flights anymore, I was going to be on planes and in airports for hours and hours. Lots of contact with strangers, lots of breathing shared air. I said HCQ is quite safe, dosages well known, it is OKed for use with pregnant women, the anti studies from Lancet and JAMA had BOTH been withdrawn, and so on and on.
My doc said no-can-do. HCQ ws not on the list of medications they’re allowed to prescribe. (I wound up buying a Quercetin/Zinc supplement from Amazon and I’m still in good health LOL).
? Is this still America ?
I don’t recognize the place any more. . . which disturbs me greatly.
Can we ever get back to normal again?
I read the article in Tablet (it is linked at the start of this essay). It is excellent and comprehensive. There are several databases listing papers about HCQ to treat the virus, Here is one: https://c19study.com/ The listings include positive, negative, and neutral studies. The studies that are not research articles are clearly labeled as “News”. Even the positive studies often have concerns expressed. And there are links to each original paper. There are 37 studies labeled positive. There are 15 studies labeled negative, but most actually showed ‘no difference’ or were on late stage patients for which HCQ is not appropriate.
JimNorCal: Your comment is helpful. But “studies from Lancet and JAMA had BOTH been withdrawn” is not quite correct: they have been RETRACTED. That is a really big deal in science. You could withdraw to fix a problem and then republish, but retraction means there is an extremely serious error that would likely cause damage to the area of science.
At least 2 billion people have taken HCQ over ~60 years. It is considered safer than Tylenol, which can cause serious damage with a moderate overdose (or with lots of alcoholic drinks).
Cicero, I cannot speak for the Boston VA system. I am in the Minneapolis system, and my care is quite good. If I need to see a doctor, I get to see a doctor about as quickly as someone in a private system. I can usually see my GP within 24 hours.
Hospitalized patients are four to a room, unusual these days in other hospitals.
I did have a rather dramatic and obvious hernia. My GP thought I should live with it, and didn’t think a surgeon would operate, as I was overweight. I convinced him to refer me anyway. It took four months to see the surgeon, who took one look and said, “Man, you need to get that operated on.” The surgery took place eight months after that.
Yeah, it took a year, because it was not urgent. But urgent stuff gets done fast. I’m grateful for my coverage.
Governor of Minnesota has quietly taken HCQ off the forbidden list. Why? No one knows yet..
https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2020/08/17/mn_governor_quietly_reverses_course_on_hydroxychloroquine__143978.html
Keep this chart handy for every political story you read.
https://babylonbee.com/news/infographic-a-guide-to-our-stupid-news-cycle
“…probably…”
Um no, not “probably”.
Chalk it up as a YUGE “win” for the Democratic Party and its MSCM hench-ogres.
THEY are responsible for policies—and for SUPPRESSING information—that ensure that scads more people die.
And Trump gets the blame, amplified to the hilt by the Democratic Party’s LOYAL media.
(Did I say “win”? Make that “win-win”….)
J.J. Couple of comments on the MN gov’s decision. Is he liable, legally, for making a decision he is not qualified to make for the negative results–death and damage to the infected?
At the very least, he should be required to go on local news and read the names of the deceased.
Lots of people are positions to make decisions and, one way or another, people die See a squad leader in combat, for example. Sometimes the decisions were wrong.
But to make a decision regarding medicine in order to stick it to orangemanbad removes any protection about presumed good faith.
42 million people live in Uganda. They take hydroxychloroquine regularly for malaria. They’ve had a bit more that 1500 cases of covid, with a staggering number of 15 deaths. Dangerous it is. To democrats. Hard to calculate how many lives would have been saved if it had been widely prescribed here in the U. S.
Pingback:Get the story straight. Please?
I’m traveling now (by car) with a supply of quercetin and zinc with us. Like JimNorCal, my doctor refuses to prescribe HCQ. Outrageous.
I never liked the Doctor Class here and elsewhere. Their arrogance was greater than classical physics professors.
A_Nonny_Mouse on August 17, 2020 at 10:11 pm said:
? Is this still America ?
I don’t recognize the place any more. . . which disturbs me greatly.
Can we ever get back to normal again?
Welcome to Ymar’s world.
Normal? I am not flipping no Normal Switch, humanity. I am flipping it into Overdrive 2021 Season Finale.
Get Ready.
In 2022 when Yammer is still with us what will be his story? “Neve rmind?”
Yes, I don’t recognize this world anymore. People, even experts, are being blinded by hate and there’s no getting through to them apparently. For example, I was very disappointed when the Lancet study came out, but although I accepted it must be significant—I mean, c’mon, it’s a huge Lancet study—when I read about it I immediately thought that something was way off. I’m a lawyer, not a doctor, but when you pay attention to the various data and studies about COVID, you see that it’s hard to get studies that control for all of the variables, and that the studies we had up to that point all involved relatively small numbers of patients, usually in the hundreds but no more than a few thousand cases at most. Yet the Lancet study purported to have this enormous amount of vetted data from thousands upon thousands of cases from around the world, many from third world nations. I wondered how it was that all these countries had meticulously collected and processed of this data. and how this information could have been verified with enough confidence to support the Lancet article’s conclusions. Yep, I’m not an expert, but it wasn’t long before the entire thing was exposed as a hoax based on exactly what I had suspected—phony data. If I could spot some big potential problems, how can it be that not only the Lancet people but every other expert in the world did not? And despite the fact that the hoax was discovered relatively soon, we are still struggling to get a fair hearing on the safety and efficacy of this drug based in large measure on the initial reactions to the Lancet study. Why??? It was a hoax!