Evidence against Hydroxychloroquine

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Xystus said:
you do realize that Trump was not the person to come up with the idea to use Hydroxychloroquine, dont you?
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Everything is political with some. I think they are shocked and tired about losing, when they think they should be winning (politically). So they nitpik to score wins.
Imagine a middle school mentality.
 
LeafByNiggle said:
Because of Trump’s premature touting of a cure that contained another form of what fish tank guy took.
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It is the height of stupidity to self medicate on a fish tank cleaner that the imbecile thinks contains a particular substance. It is almost as bad to blame that stupidity on someone who said a particular treatment was promising. And again, Trump did not think up the treatment himself. he was told about it and shared the information.
 
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Xystus said:
Trump is not forcing doctors to prescribe this. there is not a doctor in the country that prescribes anything simply because the president said it may work.
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The fact is that this sudden interest in HC caused a shortage and in our jurisdiction, the government had to ask doctors to prescribe something else (much less effective) for patients that needed it. The patients that needed it include severe arthritis and lupus, both very serious medical conditions.

That’s what happens when a president tries to play “doctor” instead of letting the scientists do their work first.
 
This is that VA study. Another link here to the original PDF:


This is the commentary from an acquaintance with a background in epidemiology. My only editing was to provide paragraphs as writing isn’t this fellow’s strong point.
This is basically a case of garbage in, garbage out. In my epidemiological opinion. My masters course in critiquing studies like this was my favorite! So the authors looked back at patient records from various VA locations and compared COVID positive patients who got (1) HCQ, (2) HCQ+Z-pack, or (3) just “standard care” which they didn’t describe in any detail so no idea what that entails.

Next they simply compared rates of death, discharge, and intubation among patients in these 3 treatment groups. On the surface it looks like more of the group 1 patients died than group 3. However, were group 1 patients different somehow? Well, I would argue that they probably were, because they got the HCQ. They probably needed the meds more than others who only got standard care.

Because the researchers know this is probably an issue that will muddy the meaningfulness of the results, they use a fancy method called “propensity score adjustment” which is a statistical way to dust off the muddiness by adjusting the model to account for what they would deem differences might be between those who got treatment 1 vs 3. It’s used often and it can be helpful, but in this case it’s akin to washing your car with muddy water. The study also has not been peer reviewed or published. I would call it exploratory at best.

The more interesting result to me is the difference between groups 1 and 2. They were likely a cleaner comparison, and it appears the combo of HCQ and Z-pack worked better, which is consistent with other reports we have heard. Lastly the study group was all men, so the muddy results shouldn’t be generalized to women.
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OraLabora said:
That’s what happens when a president tries to play “doctor” instead of letting the scientists do their work first.
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the president is not playing doctor and only shared information he got from the scientists. God forbid the man share information about a potential treatment.
 
Xystus said:
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OraLabora:
That’s what happens when a president tries to play “doctor” instead of letting the scientists do their work first.
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the president is not playing doctor and only shared information he got from the scientists. God forbid the man share information about a potential treatment.
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Bold mine.
I think it’s irresponsible of any leader to tout a treatment that isn’t fully understood as a definitive cure.
We’re talking about Trump sharing this as if he were some rando on the internet who believed that Hydroxychloroquine is an adequate treatment. Trump is, for better or worse, the President of the United States, and it’s irresponsible of him to push out half-baked ideas that haven’t been fully researched. He’s the president, not a poster on r/futurology, and his words carry definite weight and consequences.
 
Xystus said:
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OraLabora:
That’s what happens when a president tries to play “doctor” instead of letting the scientists do their work first.
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the president is not playing doctor and only shared information he got from the scientists.
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He did much more than “share”. He promoted! Big time. Repeatedly. It was yet another attempt to cast himself as the “one who knows” what those stupid Democrats do not know, in all their “sky is falling” hysteria. He may not have said those exact words, but his meaning was clear.
 
Zzyzx_Road said:
This is the commentary from an acquaintance with a background in epidemiology. My only editing was to provide paragraphs as writing isn’t this fellow’s strong point.
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I’m sorry, but “an acquaintance with a background in epidemiology” may be enough to convince you, but unless someone is good friends with this acquaintance of yours, there is no reason your retelling of his position should convince anyone else. This all goes back to the debate that was going on a week or more ago - that there never was any convincing evidence the HCQ was a benefit. So criticizing this new study without also criticizing the early claims of effectiveness is not quite fair.
 
Everything about the claims of hydroxychloroquine as a therapy was absurd. There has never been an actual mechanism stated. One absolutely dreadful and faulty study, and all of sudden you have the President of the United States suggesting it seems like a good idea. The quinine group is designed to fight an infection by a eukaroytic plasmodium, whereas COVID-19 is an RNA virus. If you even consider viruses to by an order of life, it’s an entirely different branch from plasmodiums. Humans are more closely related to the organism that causes malaria than the coronavirus family.
 
A lot of people have apparently been cured by hydroxychloroquine and zinc mixture. Bottom line.
 
When the President first touted this medicine as potentially beneficial, I was worried. No one except a few people already on the medication had ever heard of it. Now, I knew people would be clamoring for it. He is the President! My sincerest hope was that it would be true because if not, everyone would use it against him.

Well, it may not be the cure all many think it is. It may turn out that it helps in certain cases. It’s just too early to know.

While fish tank guy may have been an idiot, he drank that stuff because the President mentioned the name. I certainly don’t blame Trump for that guys stupidity but the fact remains…none of us would have even known the name if the President hadn’t mentioned it. Trump would have been much better off if he had instead never said the name of the drug and just mentioned that there was a promising treatment being investigated. Naming the drug was the issue!
 
Xystus said:
you do realize that Trump was not the person to come up with the idea to use Hydroxychloroquine, dont you?
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But you do realize he was the one touting its efficacy even when experts were pleading for caution?

Two of his quotes that come to mind; one dangerous, and one questionable:
“What do you have to lose?”
“I’m not a doctor, but I do have common sense”.
 
Victoria33 said:
A lot of people have apparently been cured by hydroxychloroquine and zinc mixture. Bottom line.
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And now, a lot of people have apparently died by hydroxchloroquine.

Seems more like Russian Roulette rather than a fix…but, to quote a famous man, “What do they have to lose”, and “I’m not a doctor, but I have common sense”.
 
dscath said:
And now, a lot of people have apparently died by hydroxchloroquine.

Seems more like Russian Roulette rather than a fix…but, to quote a famous man, “What do they have to lose”, and “I’m not a doctor, but I have common sense”.
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Besides the fish tank example, please cite one example.
 
But but but…ORANGE MAN BAD! Any and everything he suggests is BAD!

He can never be right! Ever!

REEEEEEEEEEEE!
 
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