guest post by Leo Goldstein
[cr note: This is an interesting hypothesis from Leo Goldstein. I’ll add some observations]
We have a sharp surge in the new COVID-19 cases. The main [or just one factor out of several, a contributor ~cr] cause is likely to be the drop in the use of Hydroxychloroquine based treatment, following the FDA Memorandum of June 15. The FDA Memorandum accompanied the revocation of the Emergency Use Authorization for Hydroxychloroquine and Chloroquine from the National Strategic Stockpile. The FDA Memorandum vilified the drug, falsely alleging that it is not safe and “unlikely to be effective” against COVID-19 – when thousands of doctors have treated hundreds of thousands of patients with it . The National Institutes of Health’s NIH COVID-19 Panel updated its Guidelines to match on the FDA’s opinion the next day.
Although Hydroxychloroquine remains an approved drug and doctors can still prescribe it off-label, the FDA’s and NIH’s opinions have significant influence. State governments and medical boards adhere to the FDA opinion, in their subsequent recommendations. Even when HCQ is not banned outright, such opinion creates a chilling effect on pharmacies, doctors, hospitals, and, especially insurance companies.
From the declaration by Jeremy Snavely, 6/22:
Multiple members of AAPS have communicated to AAPS their inability to prescribe hydroxychloroquine (HCQ) for a full regimen to treat or prevent COVID-19, including but not limited to physicians in Western Michigan, Georgia, New Jersey, Arizona, and Texas.
…
Numerous physician members of AAPS, including this “Dr. John
Doe,” reasonably fear retaliation against them by state medical boards based on
Defendants’ irrational restrictions on HCQ along with the incorporation of the
directive made to state medical boards by the Federation of State Medical Boards.
(ASSOCIATION OF AMERICAN PHYSICIANS & SURGEONS v FDA et al, 1:20-cv-00493, FEDERAL COURT FOR THE WESTERN DISTRICT OF MICHIGAN)
HCQ Benefits
It is important to note that early antiviral treatment of patients with COVID-19 symptoms, using HCQ + AZ (+Zn), benefits not only the patient, but the public in general. Such treatment quickly reduces the viral load in the patient and the chances of the further transmission. [While this may be the case, generally evidence at this time only exists for improved outcomes for patients~cr]
Fig. 1. US daily new confirmed COVID-19 cases per day, 7-day rolling average (*)
Fig. 1 shows that the daily number of new cases was declining in April and May, as many states were re-opening, then remained on the same level, despite an increase in testing. Even the riots and demonstrations that started on May 26 did not lead to visible increases. However, after June 15 the daily number of new cases shot up and continues growing.
Fig. 2. US tests per confirmed COVID-19 case, 7-day rolling average (*)
(*) The typical time between the infection and onset of symptoms is 3-5 days. Notice that the graphs are rolling averages, corresponding to central averages of 3-4 days before.
Fig. 2 shows that the number tests per a new case was steadily growing (getting better) from around April 16 to June 16. It has been falling after that.
The Game Changer
Yes, an early stage Hydroxychloroquine + Azithromycin treatment was the game changer in the fight against COVID-19. Fig. 3-4 shows that COVID-19 has never gotten much traction in Asia, Africa, and Australia, partly because of wide availability and absence of prejudice against CQ/HCQ in those regions. In March, most COVID-19 deaths were happening in Europe, and their number was growing uncontrollably.
Fig. 3. Daily COVID-19 deaths, 7-day rolling average (**)
But on March 16, Dr. Didier Raoult publicized his HCQ+AZ treatment regimen. Doctors in Italy and Spain started to use it, although slowly and only in hospital settings. On March 19, President Donald Trump “touted” it, immediately making this treatment popular in the world. On March 22-23, Dr. Zelenko published his protocol, adding Zinc, and, more importantly, stressing the need to treat early, without waiting for testing or hospital admission. Early HCQ+AZ treatment ramped up in Europe between March 21 and March 28. In Italy, it became the standard of care even for mild cases.
Some of the patients who did not receive HCQ+AZ treatment timely continued dying, with a typical two weeks between closing window for anti-viral treatment and the death. Those who received it, typically recovered. Around March 25, the growing number of new cases was matched by the growing number of HCQ-based treatments. This is reflected by the April 10 peak on the chart, which is an average of recorded deaths from April 3 to April 10. After that, the humans won, and the number of daily deaths went down.
The dynamics in North America was different. Governors of New York and Michigan, suffering from the Trump Derangement Syndrome, rejected the hydroxychloroquine, with heartbreaking consequences.
Fig. 4. Daily COVID-19 cases, 7-day rolling average (**)
(**) If a case outcome is death, this takes place on average 18.5 days after the symptoms appear. Assuming that the window for effective antiviral intervention is 4-5 days, a typical death happens about two weeks after the window closes. There was a significant increase in testing during this period. Notice that the graphs are rolling averages, corresponding to central averages of 3-4 days before.
Prevention of bad outcome of COVID-19 is not the only benefit of HCQ + AZ treatment. It also decreases transmission. COVID-19 patients are most infective within about 4-8 days since symptoms appear. The infected persons who have symptoms show them 3-5 days after the infection. Thus, an untreated “confirmed case” causes more symptomatic or “confirmed” patients 7-11 days later [this is hypothetical and not really known~cr]. This is how it worked until March 20, leading to the averaged peak of about 45 daily cases in the week March 26 – April 2. Then they ramped up the early treatment, immediately decreasing the viral loads and chances of transmission. Around March 25, they were treating enough persons early enough to decrease the transmission coefficient below 1. The continuous drop in the new cases, showing on the chart after April 7, is the evidence to it.
HCQ-based prophylaxis might have been a factor, too. Notice that shutdowns also occurred in the relevant time frame, and, probably, contributed to stopping and reversing the COVID-19 epidemic in Europe.
Texas
States that had low infection levels and used HCQ widely, like Texas and Florida, are especially affected. The daily number of new cases in Texas has quadrupled since June 15! Texas has largely reopened in May. Throughout the May and first half of June, the daily number of cases remained below 2,000. The FDA memo was followed on June 19 by a stronger worded statement from Texas Medical Association. (The current TMA leadership is militantly leftist.) The number of daily new cases went up and exceeded 8,000 on July 1.
Lacking legal authority to prohibit doctors from prescribing FDA-approved non-controlled drugs, some state governments used their ability to regulate pharmacies to cut patients’ access to Hydroxychloroquine. Surprisingly, the Texas State Board of Pharmacy was one of the first to do that. Its order said:
No prescription or medication order for chloroquine, hydroxychloroquine, mefloquine, or azithromycin may be dispensed or distributed unless all the following apply:
(1) the prescription or medication order bears a written diagnosis from the prescriber consistent with the evidence for its use;
(2) the prescription or medication order is limited to no more than a fourteen (14) day supply, unless the patient was previously established on the medication prior to the effective date of this rule; and
(3) no refills may be permitted unless a new prescription or medication order is furnished.
This “consistent with the evidence for its use” was interpreted as a permission to dispense hydroxychloroquine and azithromycin for COVID-19. It might be that this interpretation has changed to prohibition after June 16.
[Florida does not have such a leftist medical board and has been forging its own path~cr]
Mutations Potential
The high viral load in the population also increases probability of adverse mutations.
On July 3, Dr. Fauci said that the coronavirus mutated into a more transmissible strain. This is something expected when the only measure against it is social distancing. Such mutation might have been more important factor in the growth of cases.
Whatever the cause of the growth in the new daily cases, wider and early use of HCQ+AZ is a solution. [potentially~cr]
The FDA Memo, June 15
On June 15, the FDA revoked Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) for HCQ & CQ. This EUA was useless anyway. But it was accompanied by a memorandum, looking as science, but being anything but.
Outright Lies
The FDA memo claimed 347 reports of adverse effects from HCQ in the context, implying these events happened in the US. It was based on HHS internal Review of Hydroxychloroquine and Chloroquine conducted by CDER Office of Surveillance and Epidemiology and delivered on May 19 (“the OSE Review”). This review was released to the public on July 1. It said that only 97 alleged cases of adverse effect were in the US, while 250 ones were abroad.
Efficacy
The efficacy of HCQ + AZ, with and without Zn, given early, have been reported by thousands of physicians around the world, and confirmed by more than a dozen of peer reviewed studies. The FDA elected to ignore them. It referred to all COVID-19 treatment regimens, using HCQ, as if they were one treatment. The FDA memo mentioned the British RECOVERY study, in which the researchers gave their patients a toxic dose (2,400 mg/day) of Hydroxychloroquine because they mixed up hydroxychloroquine with hydroxyquinoline. It also referred to the unfinished and not reported ORCHID trial (NCT04332991). This trial repeated old errors – HCQ was given to hospitalized (i.e., likely late stage) patients, with neither Azithromycin nor Zinc.
With the same logic, the FDA performed a literature review. The review was limited to the CDC library, thus omitting all studies not included in it. Even that was not enough. The FDA removed from the review the most valuable part – clinical trials, including randomized clinical trials. It limited the review to observational papers (called “studies of databases” by Dr. Raoult), including the infamous Mehra et al.
Safety
Contrary to the FDA Memo allegations, the OSE Review did not state that HCQ or HCQ+AZ combination is unsafe. The raw numbers suggest extraordinary safety of HCQ+AZ treatment. There were only 97 reports of adverse effects in hundreds of thousands of people treated with it.
QT prolongation was the most reported “adverse effect.” In fact, it is not an adverse effect, but a computed value, providing preliminary warning before an adverse effect, like Torsades de Pointes, arrhythmia, or tachycardia might happen.
The contra-indications for HCQ=AZ (including arrhythmia, tachycardia, and G6PD deficiency), and drug-interactions with strong QT prolongers (including some popular anti-depressants and anti-psychotics) are known and should be respected.
At the late stage, COVID-19 causes cardiac arrest in some of the patients. Apparently, when HCQ+AZ is given at the late stage, there might be negative synergy with the damage from COVID-19 in some patients. But the proper HCQ use is to start the treatment early.
OSE Review acknowledges the following limitations of its data (emphasis is added):
FAERS data have limitations. First, there is no certainty that the reported event was actually due to the product. FDA does not require that a causal relationship between a product and event be proven, and reports do not always contain enough detail to properly evaluate an event. Further, FDA does not receive reports for every adverse event or medication error that occurs with a product. Many factors can influence whether or not an event will be reported, such as the time a product has been marketed and publicity about an event. Therefore, FAERS data cannot be used to calculate the incidence of an adverse event or medication error in the U.S. population.
Conclusion
Doctors and pharmacists should disregard FDA/NIH/AMA/barking-dogs insinuations about Hydroxychloroquine. State governments should remove legal and illegal impediments to use Hydroxychloroquine in early treatment of COVID-19 patients.
[Additional studies are likely needed to develop this hypothesis such as correlating prescriptions per county to any changes to rising case numbers. There are scores of studies not being performed in this hyperpolitical environment, such as:
One: 65 plus year olds who take care of their grandkids vs those who don’t vs those who don’t have grandkids.
Two: studies of household transmission as a function of socioeconomic status, ethnicity, household size, house size.
Three: missed diagnostic procedures for various cancers, eg mammography, colonoscopies. Extrapolate delayed diagnosis to more costs, ie more advanced, and more deaths.
Four: Monthly death rates for the major classes of diseases from January thru now.
Five: adjudicated reviews of a sample of ‘covid deaths’.
~cr]
I love Wattsupwiththat but I thought it was science based….
Isn’t it likely the cause of the rapid spike in Covid19 cases might have something to do with the end to lock down and minimal social distancing…just like we are going to see in Europe in about 10 days
Or more testing 😉
Multiple factors are likely contributing to the spikes, such as they actually exist.
More testing, including the recent combining of antibody and live virus tests into one result by the CDC is one factor.
Reopening another.
General fatigue with adhering to safety guidelines is a third that arguable is contributing.
And then there are the demonstrations and riots.
There may even be some people who had been using masks who have stopped, and maybe some who have stopped all safety measures, in response not to getting tired of it, or getting sloppy, but did so because there seems to be some political signaling occurring, wherein a message is being implied and even stated outright that the whole thing is some sort of made up emergency, perpetrated by the left. So not wearing a mask is a way of signaling one’s conservative bona fides.
Certainly there is exaggeration of the risk and consequences, and the lockdowns are almost surely unconstitutional in many cases and in many aspects.
Imposing a quarantine on sick people is legal, but on healthy people? I sincerely doubt it.
But viral pneumonia is real enough, and can be quite severe and very damaging to one’s health regardless of whether a person dies. So I for one am still doing what I can to prevent myself from getting it, although I may have it already.
If I do, it is a mild case. So far at least.
Yes, multiple factors need to be examined, just like with climate, trying to chose a single factor as the sole cause is not the most credible approach.
Goeff Bulte:
You start out calling for science and then switch to clairvoyance. Very amsuing.
Most of the major countries in Europe went through this cycle well before the USA, both in terms of infection confinement and deconfinement. Are you confusing UK pub rules with the entire continent of Europe? LOL
Instead of clairvoyance of what you estimate you are “going to see” in about 10 days, why don’t you examine the existing data from May and June.
Spain and Italy ( first affected and first out of confinement ) saw ZERO up tick as they released their populations from house arrest. France was a week or two behind in easing but also has not seen an increase.
In Italy the rate of change of new cases remained negative after restrictions were removed:
What is happening in the USA is particular to the USA and is contrary to what has happened in similar societies in Europe. You should look for why that is happening.
Dr Goldstein’s HCQ hypothesis looks credible, sadly he is not the most reliable contributor on WUWT.
The dismissal of BLM riots being a factor is rigged since it assumes the date of 26 May when Floyd was ki11ed. That was just the catalyst, not the date of the massive demos which went on for weeks afterwards.
3-5 days incubation + 3.5d lag due trailing means in the graphs ( plus possible testing delays ) gives 1-2 weeks delay.
As we know growth of infection is exponential, saying where exactly that starts is not clear.
From the graphs shown it is perfectly consistent with BLM being the cause.
More detailed state by state analysis would be more enlightening.
You should be taking quercetin and make sure you are not deficient in Zn and vit D. But you don’t believe this do you!?
+20
Thx… Because I care, I am trying to help Nick the McGinley do what’s right… and understand what is known. I hope he takes quercetin [and or EGCG] and that he makes sure he’s not deficient in Zn and vit D. I doubt he will thank me for suggesting he purchases snake oil.
You can keep your advice Mario.
I liked you better when you were proud of being a scientifically illiterate goof.
In March you wondered if you ever had the disease, and if the “green powders from Costco” and vitamin D might have helped.
A few weeks later you were pretty sure it was all the zinc you took, nothing said about vitamins.
And a week later you were trolling the internet screaming epithets at doctors being cautious about experimental treatments, acting like an expert, saying you have gotten sick and “cured yourself” by your perspicacious knowledge of zinc ionophores.
Just flat out lying. Your evolution from inquisitive and good natured, through credulous and gullible (you were sold on chloroquine the day an article was published, but there was no talk of hydroxychloroquine for quite a while), and not just an unpleasant troll in charge of insulting people who get to close to the target with their criticisms.
Your entire story is right here, in your own words.
Nick the Menicholas, or whoever you are… Heed this response.
As in your initial attack on me your summary is rife with inaccuracies.
You will recall that I was at that time generally interested in what you were saying esp since your name came out of nowhere. You presented yourself like a doctor or like someone who was confident. I listened to you with interest as I was reading medical sites, and medical journals. The problem is that I am a quick study in the area of science and process control.
And then you ad hominem maligned me while failing to state specific items where I was wrong. I had not had an argument with with you prior to your unprovoked attack. It took me a while to realize you were a shill, after your cowardly attempt to attacked me. I initially asked if you were talking about someone else, but you in the most weasel way never responded. However, I became skeptical of your M.O.
I was diagnosed with a lower resp’ virus that was non flu a or b. Fever and aches for 5 days above 100F below 102, dry extremely rumbly cough for 5 days, rumbly breathing that required albuterol every 1 to 2 hours for 5 days that scared the hell out of my wife, clear phlegm, but not productive. It vanished almost immediately after day 5. On day 6 I was itching to go to work, but my boss turned me around to work at home because of Covid 19.
My lungs never felt better since I started on quercetin. Never. This is not any proof of anything. But that started my research into RNA viruses, which evidently you know nothing about. Nothing of use.
I tested negative for the antigen test twice. So it was not Covid 19 according to the tests.
Now that you’ve been exposed, at least few will take you seriously and the world will be better for it.
You, should take my advice, it’s better than anything I’ve heard from you.
Two months ago I read a report from a doctor that treated Lupus patients with hydroxychloroquine , I believe in California, who were not being infected with Covid-19 as others were at the time. I also read a study that in the laboratory zinc interfered with coronavirus replication, however zinc was unable to cross the cell wall barrier to enter a cell that the virus must penetrate in order to replicate. The study pointed out that hydroxychloroquine does penetrate the cell wall and could be the vector to pull zinc into the cell when penetration occurs. I then researched recommended supplementation for Lupus patients and zinc is prominent on the list. It seemed to me at that time that if the Lupus patients that did not have problems with this virus it could be that their medication and zinc supplementation may give them some protection. Wonder if anyone is investigating this.
I was not aware of anyone looking at COVID infection rates in Lupus patients nor that zinc was part of the remedy, very interesting. After 4 months of this, it’s odd that no one has looked the groups who were already receiving HCQ treatment !
They have looked.
There were scattered statements from people saying this and that.
A doctor in one place said that he had never in decades of practice ever seen one person who was unable to take HCQ.
But a look at what others have noted to be the case makes it clear that some subset of lupus patients are unable to take it, and some more take it but have to stop after some period of time.
Other reports were to the effect that people with lupus, whether on HCQ or not (most lupus patients seem to be taking it), could not and have not ever gotten it, or never died from it, yada yada yada.
But a look at what the lupus community is saying reveals this not to be the case.
For one thing, people with lupus are very prone to infections and suffer greatly when they get them, so they have long ago learned to be very careful when it comes to avoiding getting exposed to any infectious diseases.
There is a registry of lupus patients, and of course all the way back when this was going on, everyone in the world with lupus was very eager to know if this was true, so a call went out on Twitter and through various support groups for anyone who had gotten covid, or knew of a patient who had gotten it, and if any had died, etc.
The short answer is, lupus patients on HCQ can and have gotten COVID.
Some have died.
It is a rare disease, far less common than some other autoimmune rheumatic conditions like RA.
But it is a big world and a big country and a small percentage is nonetheless a whole bunch of people.
Since lupus patients are extra careful to avoid getting sick and have a lot of practice doing so, it is not as simple as getting a percentage of lupus patients who have gotten it vs percentage of the general population.
I have not looked at this issue in a while, so I will check now on the latest info available.
Salute!
O.K. Nick, show us the studies re: Lupus folks versus COVID. Ditto for veterans that served in malaria zones.
Show us the % of the millions of we vets that took the HCL and its sisters from 1961 to 1975 that have “gone south” or have serious, lifelong problems. Especially look at pilots, as we have a very good document trail from before we even joined until well after we got out.
What prevents me from asking my doctor for a malaria prophylactic due to my “cruise” thru several countries this summer that have established malaria problems?
Gums sends…
Gums,
I posted a lot of info and studies about lupus, covid, and HCQ.
I said nothing about veterans.
But I have seen others post stuff from some military organization about awful mental effects from HCQ, although many insist the stuff is benign.
This will all blow over soon re what works and what does not.
There is a huge about of research and studies going on, and it will eventually be impossible for any ambiguity to exist.
Haha! Just kidding!
No matter what, it appears that some people have already made up their minds.
I bet none of them have a history of biotech or big pharma investing.
Yes the Chinese have stated the same thing, that those already taking HCQ for lupis were not catching SARS-2. Many nations are using HCQ as a prophylactic and treatment for SARS-2.
Geoff Bulte – July 5, 2020 at 6:26 pm
It is of my learned opinion, ……… that the above referenced “six (6) feet minimal social distancing” is little more than a “sick joke” being perpetrated upon the populace.
“HA”, they are inferring that the Covid19 flu/virus cannot “jump” more than 5 feet, 11 inches, to infect another victim.
But, “HA, HA”, the Covid19 flu/virus doesn’t have to “jump” more than 5 feet, 11 inches, …. jumping 1 or 2 inches off its current victim is far enough.
Shur nuff, a jump of 1 or 2 inches off its current victim is far enough ……. because its next victim will have moved into the “space” just vacated by the previous victim and become infected themselves …….. and the “old” victim to ”new” victim continues to spread as the crowd of people moves along.
Let’s see what the good folks at the Lupus Foundation of America have to say these days, eh?
They say such things as:
– Question: “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. People with lupus should follow the guidance of their doctor and the safety guidelines being issued by the CDC”
Well, that seems emphatic.
This is the people who have and treat lupus speaking, and if anyone would know, it is them.
What else?
Plenty, as it turns out.
– Question: “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, so people who are not already taking this medication do not need to start it now. People with lupus should follow the guidance of their doctor and the safety guidelines being issued by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) for people with compromised immune systems.”
Well, that part is clear. Lupus makes it very bad to get any infectious disease, and there is no evidence that HCQ prevents anyone from getting it, including and specifically, lupus patients.
They are in fact at higher risk, and need to follow guidelines for people with compromised immune systems.
This site has an article regarding people who have lupus and also have COVID, and how many have it, and how many have died.
Not many people have signed up for the registry, only about 110 worldwide with both a rheumatic disease and COVID 19.
17% have lupus.
5% have died.
Many have several comorbidities.
People have privacy rights, so it is not as easy as one might suppose to find out how many people with some chronic illness who take a certain medication, have contracted COVID19.
But with limited data, it is clear HCQ is not a bulletproof shield, and lupus patients who are on it or not on it, get COVID like everyone else, and some die. And they may have a worse go of it even if they do not die, which is most people, but only get really sick, which is more likely for many of them than for someone with a normal immune system.
Here are some links:
https://www.lupus.org/news/hydroxychloroquine-and-coronavirus-survey-key-findings
Ok, here is something with more info.
It is a paper from early June with more info on hospitalization of people with lupus and discusses those who have it and take steroids (increased risk of hospitalization), and those who take antimalarials (no increased risk of hospitalization after adjusting for various factors). Unadjusted, lupus patients were more likely to be hospitalized.
Of 600 people who enrolled in this registry, the ones with the 2nd highest rate of hospitalization were the ones with lupus (48 of 85, 56%).
Overall, of people with this sort of disease and who were in the registry, 46% were hospitalized and 9% died.
Those taking antimalarials prior to getting COVID was overall about 22% of the 600.
The raw number of them taking them was higher than the average of all patients, but after adjusting for other factors it was the same.
But not the same as people who do not have a rheumatic disease.
The same as the group of all such people who registered and got COVID.
It did not make it less likely to have a bad outcome…hospitalized or to die.
There was one drug type that made it less likely to have a bad outcome…those taking an anti-TNF drug before getting covid. Other biologics also decreased risk of hospitalization or death, but anti-TNF ones were the most favorable.
Lupus patients get COVID, and taking HCQ does not protect them.
There is no way to compare directly to people with no rheumatic diseases, but it sure seems like those rates of bad outcome are incredibly high.
“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
The Lupus Foundation is a bunch of murderous lunatics afflicted with Trump Derangement Syndrome. After March 19, it launched a campaign to deprive COVID-19 patients of Hydroxychloroquine.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2020/05/11/distributed-denial-of-hcq-to-covid-19-victims/
It claimed shortages when there were none, and called on the lupus patients to rush to pharmacies and to refill their 90-days prescriptions for HCQ. It advised them how to defeat possible measures against hoarding, such as 30-days limit. With the help of the MSM & Big Tech, they caused the run on the drug, and created shortages.
A COVID-19 patient needs only 5-days course, which might save his life, and would decrease transmission of the disease.
There are > 2M lupus & RA patients, taking HCQ daily. There were only tens of thousands of COVID-19 sufferers in March …
The BMJ study on rheumatic patients shows that they found between 52 and 272 rheumatic patients with COVID-19, after searching in databases worldwide.
The BMJ study was a registry of 600 patients with rheumatic disease that had the virus.
277 of the 600 wound up hospitalized, and 9% of the 600 died.
It was a registry, not a data base search.
Doctors and patients were asked to enter their data.
When one looks at those data tables and that text, it is what a good study should look like.
As for your assessment of the lupus foundation people, I have no idea how you have the nerve to say such things about people.
We all recall quite clearly what was going on.
Doctors were found to be writing prescriptions for themselves and friends and family.
People who had no need to take it were doing whatever they could to get their hands on some.
And people who had been taking the only drug they had ever found that worked well and was affordable were being told pharmacies were sold out and there was a run on the stuff.
The news reports fanned the flames of panic.
People flooded into stores and bought up ten years worth of toilet paper.
Some guys bought up almost every single N-95 mask and every bottle of hand sanitizer that every store within 100 miles had in stock, plus all the online stores…they bought them out too, then tried to sell it all for ten times the price they had paid. Maybe it was more than ten X.
There was stuff going on like that left and right.
With everyone trying to secure a supply, and many of them not needing it and having never took it, you single out the people with the awful disease that makes their life a living hell, as somehow uniquely evil for not wanting to run out of the stuff they depended on?
Do you know what lupus is?
How RA and psoriatic arthritis feel when you have a flare up?
These drugs are worthless Leo, for the purpose of treating corona virus.
Besides that, there was over 205,000 active cases in the US as of April first, with 30,000 to 40,000 new cases per day.
Those people who had always taken it responded to what they were seeing…they did not start it.
As for 30 day supply, most people get a 90 day supply if they are smart.
It is much cheaper, and you do not constantly have to run around getting refills and going back to the doctor when you use your last one.
You can point at people at, single them out for frothy mouthed rage if you want, but I do not see it the way you do, at all.
I expect you will be among the last to ever believe what the data is telling us. You have invested every shred of credibility in being right about your belief.
Very few who do that regarding any subject or field, can ever manage to unpaint their way out of that corner.
Hey, you are a big boy, it is your floor, and your paint.
I will never know why anyone would do it.
Besides for all of that, I was reading the Ford Health System paper over again, and saw that the patients were all sequentially selected…every patient with COVID who walked into one of their ERs between March 10 and and May 2nd.
That is why the two treatment groups are so different!
Early on, no one was using HCQ, and then the governor banned it!
Few of those doctors know about the IL-6 blockers, and early on, some internet rumors were going around that it was bad to use steroids!
And the whole country was in the worst of the panic.
March 26th, every news outlet was running stories about the situation in Michigan hospitals, like this one: US News and WR: “Michigan Hospitals Jammed as Coronavirus Cases, Deaths Rise!”
March 30th, Whitmer is finally getting severe blowback from her earlier “crackdown” on prescriptions for malaria drugs.
Headlines screamed about all hell breaking loose in Michigan hospitals, with staff getting sick, many afraid to do their job, masks in short supply, PPE in general impossible to get in some cases.
It took a while for the whole thing with HCQ and Zpak to replace the CQ and HCQ internet scuttlebutt.
The idea was, at that point, that the malaria drugs prevented or treated cytokine storm.
Overall, it is for sure that teh learning curve of how to treat patients with COVID has been long and steep, and not smoothly flowing.
Supplies of rarely used drugs had to be ordered and delivered, and doctors had to settle on what was working best.
Over time they went from mostly passive supportive care to using drugs to treat symptoms aggressively.
More people who got HCQ and HCQ plus Zpak also got steroids and IL-6 blocker…because the doctors were learning, beds were being increased by opening up field hospitals. At some point in April there was a recommendation to not use Zpak with HCQ, flashed around the world by doctors. That combo is dangerous. Other antibiotics do the job just as well and have none of that risk, plus that class of antibiotics is in danger of becoming useless if overused, whereas doxycycline (or another one) has no such concerns
15 years of clinical trials had proven that it was better to use a different antibiotic, and to look at blood work for tell tale signs of bacterial infection before giving an antibiotic.
I was posting them hear over and over again, studies from back in the SARS and MERS breakouts and then afterwards.
CQ and HCQ have been tried for use against everything from cancers to various viral diseases, some studies compared them in combo with zpak vs in combo with a different antibiotic.
So the people who got neither were more likely to have been treated early on or when beds were full or staff spread too thin, and the ones getting the others or both tended to come later.
In addition to the other confounding factors, that not only explains it but it almost makes it inevitable in a situation where care was improving over time due to learning curve and lessening of the crisis mentality, and supplies finally coming, and just doing something better on the 2000th go that one did on the first several hundred.
And this is the sort of thing which would never happen in a randomized clinical trial set up to adapt as new standards of care were established.
BTW…they mention nothing about Remdesivir. Did they?
But some people would have wanted it in those two months.
By the end of that study period, it was made the new standard of care in the US.
I would like to see the dates of each patient getting treated. They say the treated was protocol driven, so different treatments occurred because of evolving protocols.
This connection appeared prominently on Dr Oz – thousands of lupus and rheumatoid arthritis patients on HCQ seemed to have not contracted Cov.
Roy Spencer noted much of Africa seemed to have much lower infection rates in a report here on WUWT a month ago and there are 100s of thousands Chinese there now, grabbing up mineral resources and building coal fired electricity plants.
What I hate about this whole thing is the political climate has foreclosed on good definitive studies properly designed. And in political interference in availability of HCQ. Worse, the cynical “design” of massive overdose tests that they place more reliance on than very convincing treatment results. You don’t have to go full commy to start к¿ll¿и9 off people I can see. I hope their are class action suits and maybe for some criminal prosecutions.
More testing can reveal more cases… it can’t reveal more deaths. Look at the death data, not the case numbers.
Its still science, its the first step, a hunch, an idea, its called a hypothesis. With enough funding(which is highly unlikely), it might be possible to test the hypothesis. As you say, the most likely cause of the spike lies elsewhere.
Apparently all those infected people on Hydroxychloroquine were walking around not infecting others and now they are walking around infecting others 🙂
Antiviral treatment (like HCQ+AZ+Zn) decreases amount of the virus, compared with no treatment, but does not eliminate it instantly.
Geoff Bulte, what do you do in life? Brick layer? Farmer? Do you fly and/or own a plane? Have you ever taken a derivative of a function? Do you know what an ‘abscissa’ and an ‘ordinate’ refer to? Do you have any training in the applied sciences?
You do have a tendency to get nasty and to use ad hominem and appeal to authority fallacies in your arguing.
Mr. Bulte offered a reasonable opinion, more scientific in fact, he offered a hypothesis that can be tested when he said that Europe will see a similar increase in cases in about 10 days.
to: “Scissor”
re: “You do have a tendency to get …”
Chum, can I call you chum? I have given as good as I get (may I advise you ‘look in the mirror’ on some of your own past posts to me? I don’t think they come close to charitable either.). BTW, why are you getting all bent out of shape on a few simple questions here? Can I recommend that this is psychosomatic, ‘all in your mind’ in other words . BTW folks, what skissor is doing here is called “White Knighting”, whether he/she etc. knows it or not.
PS. I will add that the SunCell is being tested to produce 1,000 deg C steam, suitable for driving steam turbine equipment and with only an “ignition” or initial arc-forming step. This brings the C.O.P. quite high w/o the requirement for the continuous ‘pinch discharge’. We can talk about this later, Skissor, after you’ve ‘come down off the wall’.
I can hardly wait.
If Dr. Mills team wants to convince the skeptical, I’d suggest that they once they get the thing running, disconnect it from line voltage and run its control by battery if necessary.
But, like Rossi’s team, they are less about convincing and more about fooling.
to: Scissor July 5, 2020 at 7:28 pm
re: “You do have a tendency to … ad hominem and appeal to authority fallacies in your arguing.”
(1) Never on a first date, and (2) you can’t cite a single case where I used an ‘appeal to authority’. If you think citing verifiable references, technical papers and lab test results is an “AtA”, then I can’t help you (and frankly, no one can.) On this point, you must be thinking of someone else.
“…you can’t cite a single case where I used an ‘appeal to authority’.
Well, you come close when you respond to my comment by asking me if I am a practicing medical doctor, and by referring to the work of someone who describes himself as a “simple country doctor”, but has nonetheless claimed to have known for a fact how to cure COVID 19 in 100% of people 100% of the time, all the way back on March 23rd, a few days after he said he had treated and followed up with something like 350+ people while practicing telehealth:
NYT, dated April 2nd:
“…Dr. Zelenko, who has been practicing telemedicine from his home office, is working to keep his coronavirus patients alive. He said his team had seen about 900 patients with possible coronavirus symptoms, treating about 350 with his regimen.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/02/technology/doctor-zelenko-coronavirus-drugs.html
Within 4 days of that, he claimed to have treated almost twice as many and followed up with them all:
Forward, dated March 27th
“He wrote in the emails sent on Friday that his clinic had so far given 669 outpatients the drug cocktail, and that none had died. ”
https://forward.com/news/national/442598/coronavirus-treatment-plaquenil/
Although soon enough he had changed his story to say at least three had become sick enough to be in the hospital after he treated them, and also saying as of an April article that at least two had died already.
He was making claims for which he offered no documentation, and was doing so before any reasonable amount of time had passed that would allow such grandiose claims to even theoretically be verified.
How he kept up with hundreds of and hundreds of patients while “seeing” (via zoom telehealth) at least 50 more a day, is a mystery, because he has never said.
I do know for a fact that entire research departments of the hospitals that run clinical trials have an impossible time staying in touch with and following up on even a few hundred patients.
I have never seen a study where no patients were lost to follow up.
One reason clinical trials are so expensive and take so long is because of the need for such things as seeing dozens and then hundreds of people, completing informed consent requirements, testing them to verify their condition and infection status, and then following up with each of them over time. No one can see hundreds of people in a day and get detailed information about them. Even contacting a hundred people and simply asking each a few questions would be very difficult to do in a day if one had a staff to help get it done.
If what he has been saying was and is true, he must be a superman, and as such providing some documentation ought to be no problem at all and something he is eager to do.
But he was not even capable to sticking to the truth regarding his claims about his approvals, and wound up getting himself investigated by the justice department, then claiming he was just sloppy and not very good at communication:
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/01/us/coronavirus-doctor-zelenko-malaria-drug.html
Starts right off with ad hominem.
No science, just speculated opinion.
Are you going to call me nasty too?
Hey, _Jim, why are you implying that the intellect level of bricklayers is somehow deficient? As a member of Mensa, I will gladly match my IQ against yours, point for point, and will beat you hands down on the caring quotient, since the quality of ones heart is infinitely more important than ones brain.
to: “Richard (the cynical one)”
re: “Hey, _Jim, why are you implying that the intellect level of bricklayers is somehow deficient?”
I think you have a problem with authority figures, Richard. Kindly ‘jet’ out of here and MYOB unless you have something to actually contribute. IOW, you run your life your way and I’ll run mine as I see fit. Okay?
Jim has issues
_jim probably owns an assault rifle too!
Ghalfrunt you are known liar so you need to shore up your credibility.
Ghalfrunt:
Do you think it was given him by formerly peaceful progressive activist rapper turned AR-15 and handgun toting CHOP warlord Raz Simone?
You know, cuz Cuz, being a progressive and all, doesn’t believe in owning “assault” rifles and handing them out to guys who appear to have not a little trouble figuring out how to load and unload the rifle’s magazine?
“According to City-Journal, on the night the area was seized, Mr Simone had been seen toting an AK-47 as well as a pistol attached to his hip as he shouted: ‘This is war!’ from a megaphone.”
https://www.news.com.au/world/north-america/warlord-of-seattles-lawless-zone-hands-out-guns-from-his-tesla/news-story/7b749d67f83231efa16946233d8a116b
Yes – I have a Phd in geophysics. use applied math every day.
As Ockham said 700 years ago “pluralitas non est ponenda sine necessitate”
I’m sorry but this hypothesis rates up there with some of the most ridiculous pro-warming claims that are regularly outed on this site
One issue I have encountered in my daily interaction with customers is that many people who had a negative test seem to think that means they are immune. That attitude it is surely a contributing factor in the spike due to people letting down their guard and not following basic precautions.
With a 70% chance of providing the correct result wouldn’t a negative result only mean ‘not positive this time’?
Good point Tom in Florida,
Cheers
Mike, a little further south in Florida.
The CDC is doing an absolute S hit job of keeping the testing data straight. If you have not heard the crazy stories where have you been.
Except, the end to lock-down in Florida and Texas were in the beginning of May. The spike in cases began mid June. The incubation period is not 6 weeks, so there is another cause to the Florida and Texas spikes. So the article is still science based but your logic is missing a few facts on the timing.
Apparently the incubation period is more highly variable than is typical for a viral illness.
But generally I agree with you, although the end of lockdowns has seemed to have accelerated in recent weeks.
I am certain the riots and demonstrations have a larger role than is being acknowledged by the MSM and certain health “experts”.
Actually the “end of lockdowns” has reversed in recent weeks and chicken littles are selectively putting lockdowns back in place.
“Except, the end to lock-down in Florida and Texas were in the beginning of May”
Details for Florida here
Phase 1 reopening started May 4, but in the city counties of Miami-Dade and Broward, not till May 18. Phase 2 reopening started June 5. Number of cases took off a few days later.
this mostly none sense, we are testing almost 3/4 of a million people a day, so you would expect many more positive tests results. the real question is how many serious illnesses and deaths. Neither are approaching anything near critical in fact deaths are still going down. Off course you will hear that its only a matter of time, and that maybe true but its been almost a months since the so called spike started.
If you look at the Maricopa, AZ Public Health web site, you can see that deaths took a hockey stick bend in recent days. Case counts started rising in that first week after the death of George Floyd on May 28. The protesting started on May 28 and continued throughout June. Hospitalizations also took a distinct upturn in that first two weeks of the protesting. The graphs on the web site are 12 day averaged, so it’s hard to know the exact day, but the change in slope comparing May to June is striking. Deaths are clearly on the upswing by the 3rd week in June, and notably deaths in the Long Term Care Facilities (LCTF) are flat, but outside the LTCFs is where ALL Of the increase in deaths fall. Looks like this case (Maricopa, AZ) can be blamed on the protests, not the HCQ ‘quarantine’.
Florida had increase in the daily number of cases since the early June.
Science commentary today in most places is actually conjecture.
There are a lot of factors that have “something to do with it.” Certainly, creating more exposure will increase transmission. Young folks in particular have gotten tired of confinement and have drastically increased their socialization.
A couple of things you didn’t mention are increased testing as well as commingling of antigen and antibody test results.
Possibly HCQ curtailment could contribute to a rise in cases in some circumstances. In any case, this is a hypothesis that could be tested. I’d like to see it explored and adjudicated.
I’ve been reading reports of people sending in blank swabs and getting back positive test results. One example:
https://twitter.com/NeeraDarvish/status/1279600664033800192
And then this CDC fiasco. Combining divergent test numbers.
https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2020/05/cdc-and-states-are-misreporting-covid-19-test-data-pennsylvania-georgia-texas/611935/
Geoff, HCQ works by stopping the virus from replicating. If it cannot replicate it cannot spread.
There is a Jewish orthodox doctor who has treated 2000 of his patients with HCQ plus AZ, with treatment starting as soon as the patient shows symptoms. He had no deaths and almost no ICU visits. See peer reviewed studies below. And if we did the same thing (treated patients as soon as they show symptoms with HCQ plus AZ, we would stop the virus from spreading and stop people from dying.
Both of which are good things.
Does that make sense? If not what, am I missing?
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4182877/pdf/pone.0109180.pdf
Chloroquine Is a Zinc Ionophore
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2973827/
Zn 2+ Inhibits Coronavirus and Arterivirus RNA Polymerase Activity In Vitro and Zinc Ionophores Block the Replication of These Viruses in Cell Culture
The HCQ treatment option ‘works’ by functioning as a zinc ionophore, and the Z+2 ion gets into our cells and stops the virus from replicating.
And if the virus does not replicate it does not spread.
Copied from above:
Prevention of bad outcome of COVID-19 is not the only benefit of HCQ + AZ treatment. It also decreases transmission. COVID-19 patients are most infective within about 4-8 days since symptoms appear. The infected persons who have symptoms show them 3-5 days after the infection. Thus, an untreated “confirmed case” causes more symptomatic or “confirmed” patients 7-11 days later [this is hypothetical and not really known~cr]. This is how it worked until March 20, leading to the averaged peak of about 45 daily cases in the week March 26 – April 2. Then they ramped up the early treatment, immediately decreasing the viral loads and chances of transmission.
HCQ in combination with azithromycin reduced the covid death rate by 71%.
https://www.ijidonline.com/article/S1201-9712(20)30534-8/fulltext
Treatment with Hydroxychloroquine, Azithromycin, and Combination in Patients Hospitalized with COVID-19
New Option:
As soon as anyone has symptoms, they phone the Covid hotline, who provide a nurse, who takes checks patient and takes statistics, provide info and HCQ and AZ along with number to call if patient worsens.
Some people ‘learn’ better when narrated graphics are used (we used to call these audio visual aids in the pre internet era). To that end, this video (by Dr. Minh D. Ta, Board certified family physician practicing in Northern Virginia) shows how the corona virus invades a cell, and how HCQ and Zinc work to reduce this:
https://youtu.be/5FbEwpj1vJw?t=400
Hi Jim.
Here is a much better explanation from MedCram. MedCram is exactly what the name states. They summarize medical explanations for medical students.
This video links to the Zinc and Zinc Ionophore papers explains the results, including pictures of cell cultures from the papers.
Start at 5:40 minutes after skipping the commercial if you are not interested in that product.
Mar5ch 10th video.
As much as I appreciate Dr. Seheult’s opinion as a physician, he is not a cell biologist that much is clear.
The first paper showed mainly in vitro data of isolated proteins. I would have loved to see any direct cell data from Fig. 1 because of viability but there was none.
Normal intracellular concentration of Zn are 200-300 µM but most Zn is bound by Zn-buffering proteins. 300 µM extracellular Zn is highly toxic to a lot cell types (e.g. cardiomyocytes and neurons) which are not artificially immortalised monkey cells (Vero6):
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2896872/
The authors used a real Zn ionophore for their Fig. 1 though: pyrithione.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pyrithione
The sulfur and oxygen are necessary for its ionophore functionality to build a complex with Zn. HCQ does not have the structurally requirements to act as a Zn ionophore. Simple chemistry.
The data from the second paper is therefore a misinterpretation of the inhibitory function of HCQ to trap Zn in lysosomes through interfering with the TRPML1, ZnT2 and ZnT4 channels.
As Fe and Zn are mainly taken up via endocytosis and then liberated from lysosomes, chloroquine would therefore trap Zn in endo/lysosomes and decrease cytosolic Zn concentrations. The opposite of would be necessary to inhibit the viral RDRP.
Whatever a possible mechanism of HCQ in the context of SARS-CoV-2 would be: it is not by being a Zn ionophore.
Yay Ron!
My new favorite Science Explainer Guy Who Knows Stuff Most People Don’t!
Nick The McGinley: hastily wrote:
Nicholas McGinley July 5, 2020 at 11:09 pm
Mar5ch 10th video.
It seems you are discrediting the video which early on, showed what science knows. What is your point? Do you understand the mechanism and deny it?
You got a lot of things never said or implied swirling around in that wacky brain of yours Mario.
I tagged it with the date so everyone who has already seen it can stop wondering if it is a new video or one we have seen posted here for about 3 solid months already.
I will never forget the pre med students in all my chemistry classes.
For them, physical & chemistry were the two two most terrifying words in the entire lexicon.
Nick: Most people know by the episode number, that this was an intro to the topic you fail to understand. The basic terms like ionophore, ions, and such.
Perhaps some day some of us might figure out how on Earth you describe tagging a video with the date it was posted is a form of discrediting it?
Stop digging maybe.
Or not…you could not have less credibility if you tried.
Maybe this one time, you were being helpful by putting a typo riddled date stamp on a video which is sequentially numbered.
So, I will give it to you that sometimes your drive-by’s are not solely to make sure people don’t benefit from excellent treatment. But that is your M.O., and you cannot retreat from your poor history of such.
You began( and continue) with ad hominem attacks on me and others. That is a sure sign of a problem you need to resolve.
Ron,
You are such a linear thinker. So HCQ + AZ reduced Covid deaths, by more than 50% and Covid serious symptoms by 71%. That is amazingly effective. Why? That is a more effective than any ‘antiviral’ chemical.
Please do explain the Vitamin D paradox. Why does being Vitamin D normal, make people almost immune to Covid?
Regardless of sex or age, Vitamin D deficient people are 19 times more likely to die from Covid than Vitamin D normal people. (Which explains why the death rate for Covid has dropped by a factor of three for Covid, in the sunshine state Florida.)
The lab in vitro test has a few hours to get results. In the body there are days for the free Zinc to enter the cell, therefore much lower concentrations of free Zn required.
We know ‘Vitamin’ D deficiency increases the death rate for Covid, regardless of sex or age by 19 times.
Vitamin D changes our cells, adding features to our cells which we evolved to provide protection against viruses, just like Covid.
We know if Zn can get it into our cells that the Zn+2 ion stops the covid virus from replicating. In fact, Zn+2 in our cells stops the entire class of viruses that must connect to the ACE-2 connector, from replicating.
There would be an evolutionary advantage to not get sick from a virus.
So our bodies over millions of years developed a mechanism which gets at tiny amount of Zinc into our cells. Vitamin D normal adds that feature to our cells.
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://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3585561
Patterns of COVID-19 Mortality and Vitamin D: An Indonesian Study
Vitamin D Insufficient Patients 12.55 times more likely to die
Vitamin D Deficient Patients 19.12 times more likely to die
Great information. I am waiting for Nick the McGinley to scream, there is no proof, no double blind study drivel.
Make sure you comment about me on every single place I have said anything.
Nothing substantive, just keep saying my name.
Say my name, and add in some insults that prove you have the worst memory on thee internet, and also that you never read anyone unless it is from one of your fellow brownnosers or is ten words or less.
Say my name!
You missed some.
It’s important since name recognition helps other people be immune from you. So what’s your gig ? How did you descend upon WUWT? What is your agenda?
@William Howard Astley
I’ve told you before where the confounding problems with the study you are probably referring to are: median age, steroids.
No vitamin D study so far has addressed the issue of comorbities that are known for lowering the vitamin D level like diabetes, kidney disease etc. Especially unnoticed beginning kidney impairment has low vitamin D levels as a symptom and kidney failure is the elephant in the room directly after respiratory failure in COVID-19.
As long as those two things are not dissected in an analysis the low vitamin D levels resulting in a higher mortality could just be a by-stander effect from other morbidities increasing the mortality.
We just don’t know.
No, we don’t know such a thing. We only know that Zn inhibits the RDRP in a test tube via unphysiological concentrations.
No, we also don’t know such things. Don’t know where this delusion originates from.
Ron: I honestly think “you” don’t know that.
@mario lento
Fortunately, what you think is of no consequences to facts if one is really interested in them.
Ron,
You need to look at the research and then think (you are not doing that part), rather than just make stuff up.
The Indonesian data (was of course a general population, not a renal ward which is the name of the ward in a hospital where people with organ failure go, give me a break) showed that Vitamin D is the primary controlling factor as to why people do or do not die of covid and have covid serious conditions.
Controlling factor means in any group of people regardless of sex or age…
Controlling means controlling.
Vitamin D insufficient people have a 12 times increased chance of dying from covid
Vitamin D deficient people have a 19 times increased chance of dying from covid.
As compared to Vitamin D normal 25(OH)D serum level of greater than 30 ng/ml which requires 4000 UI/day per person in the US to achieve for the US population.
And as to whether the patient has diabetes. Vitamin D deficient people are 50% more likely to develop type 2 diabetes. Vitamin normal people (higher normal) have a more than 70% less chance of getting breast cancer. A 50% reduction in cesarean births. Significantly better outcomes for both mother and baby. A 50% reduction in the incidence in multiple sclerosis.
Vitamin D normal people also lose roughly 20 to 40 lbs. There is a significant reduction, of the occurrence, of depression and schizophrenia
Patterns of COVID-19 Mortality and Vitamin D: An Indonesian Study
Vitamin D Insufficient Patients 12.55 times more likely to die
Vitamin D Deficient Patients 19.12 times more likely to dieBlack people are more than two times more likely to die from Covid than white people in the US and in the UK. The death rate for covid correlates with how dark the person’s skin is. Latino’s in the US have a 60% higher chance of dying than white people.
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-52574931
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-52492662
Correcting our populations Vitamin D deficiency would also reduce the incidence of type 2 diabetes by more than 50% and reduce the incidence of common cancers by 60%.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0960076015300091?via%3Dihub
Incidence rate of type 2 diabetes is >50% lower in Grassroots Health cohort with median serum 25–hydroxyvitamin D of 41 ng/ml than in NHANES cohort with median of 22 ng/ml
@William Howard Astley
You have a fundamental problem in understanding causation and correlation and the bimodal nature of many correlations.
There is no causation without correlation but correlation is not sufficient for causation. That is the big problem of every nutritional study in humans: non-detected confounding factors. I had a statistic class where the professor even claimed that it is impossible for human observational studies to really proof anything cause of overlooked confounding factors.
Yeah? Where?
The death rate for covid correlates with how dark the person’s skin is. Latino’s in the US have a 60% higher chance of dying than white people.
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-52574931
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-52492662
Are you just babbling quotes you don’t understand the implications of? Or did you notice that this result is contradicted by the very HCQ study you value so much? Ever did what you are accusing me of not doing? Thinking?
Mario sez,
“It’s important since name recognition helps other people be immune from you. So what’s your gig ? How did you descend upon WUWT? What is your agenda?”
Hubris is what you said I was infected with.
A few months after arriving here, a wide eyed goofy but happy drunk, then devolving into a hateful troll, you are telling long time regulars to go to hell and telling them to leave your site?
Nicholas McGinley:
Consider this an olive branch.
I initially thought you were asking me the same question about who I am, as so I formed an answer: And thought this is a fair way to respond to you.
You seem to think I represent or work for WUWT. I do not.
I am a guest here and I want you to stay.
I never told you to go away. I would never do something like that. If those words ever came out of me, then I will apologize, but I do not think that way.
I am a volunteer and coach for students learning to drive cars, to high performance on track driving, to race car driving coach, to semi-pro competition racecar driver. I worked with kids at a JCC (I am not Jewish) and volunteered for special needs adults and non-special needs kids in an inner city environment while I was paying my way through College.
My work background is in metallurgy 5 years, machine process control design and project management 24 years, engineering sales and manufacturing sales including Cloud SCADA system in the water industry 8 years.
I have two bachelors degrees, one in EE, another in IM from Univ of Lowell MA.
I came to WUWT because I was interested in science of climate. It made my head hurt to debate respectfully with people much smarter than me… Leif a solar physicist, whom I strongly disagreed with on affect of varying spectral changes in the sun vs TSI, was very patient with me and I learned a lot about Solar physics from a great master in that area. The thing is, he’s stern and confident, brilliant but respectful of dissent.
The best thing one can do is immerse ones self with people who know more things and have different experiences and beliefs. I am and have always been a natural skeptic, but was not so much aware of it until WUWT. WUWT is precious. I have learned a lot by being wrong and learn nothing by being right.
You visciously attacked me under the name Nicholas McGinley, while I was fond of you. You never responded to my sincere requests to explain what you meant in your attacks. It actually did hurt my feelings, because I thought you had something to offer. My questions to you were honest, and maybe, just a guess you did not like my questions… Only you can answer that.
I see a lot of learning potential in you whomever you are… the first step is to understand where you are wrong. But then hubris seems to get in the way. Fighting in not debating… fighting seeks a predetermined outcome. I am looking truth… so that my opinions can evolve around the truth.
Mario,
You cry about hurt feelings, but are one of the most horrible people I have ever encountered online.
You demean and insult anyone who disagrees with you.
Anyone can search your name in a search engine and see how you behave all over the internet.
Some of the things you say and do here and on other sites is actually shocking.
Combined with what you are on record as saying here back in the early days of this pandemic, in March, and in April, (and maybe February)it is beyond question that you are simply lying in your self justified claims.
You say a lot of things about me, but cite no examples.
Every comment on this site is still where it was made.
Show me where I acted as you say.
Show us all.
Find the article, and post the quotes you speak of, and post the link to the comments.
If you hover your mouse on the time stamp next to a name at the top of a comment, you can right click your mouse to get a link to that exact comment and then post that link here.
Please do so.
I recall exactly when you went from being pleasant to being a mean person.
I have been reviewing entire threads from back then.
But I do not have to review them to remember you.
Two days ago you were acting like you do not know where I came from, forgetting the threads, long threads, new ones every week and then every day, in which I commented extensively.
I never treat people badly unless they start it.
I never “attacked you viciously”.
But you have done so to me.
Prove me wrong.
Find the quotes.
Please.
You have made accusations, and now you ought to back them up with facts.
And please spare me your patronizing BS about how you see in me some learning potential.
Your hubris and condescension and crocodile tears are sickening to anyone who looks back at the arc of how you have interacted with many good people on this site.
You are mean and vicious to many good people, and I do not include myself in that lot.
My educational attainment and knowledge are not a source of pride for me, but I do make every effort to use what I know to inform others and to be a resource of information and ideas.
Like the time you thanked me for sharing some information about the sinuses in the human face:
“PS fantastic sinus descriptions! No wonder I used to get so many infections.”
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2020/03/20/wuhan-coronavirus-therapies-scientific-background/#comment-2944754
Well, okay, maybe you never thanked me.
You have forgotten many interactions we had, and may be unaware of some things for other reasons.
Complaining about waiting for a reply to something you wanted to know, without ever saying what or listing at example or showing me and others where this occurred, holds no water.
This and every site has long threads that go on for days.
Then new threads start.
No one has time to go back and even scan some of the threads on this site, that are at times many hundreds of comments long.
You are criticizing me and claiming wounds to your heart because I do not have the time or ability to know everything everyone says on every thread on this and other sites?
Here is a suggestion: If you ask someone something on an online thread and get no response, consider the possibility they have moved on or did not see your question.
And then ask them on the next thread they are commenting on!
It is simply preposterous to claim someone has harmed your feelings or insulted you because they are not internet omniscient!
I am not contacted when someone responds to a comment I make, or asks me a question.
Ever!
I am who I say I am.
Your passive aggressive BS about my identity have no weight.
I have regularly posted links to my twitter page.
I have a photograph of myself there.
I am not hard to find.
I can tell you this though…I did take a several month break from even reading articles on this site or even reading the news on news sites.
I just could not take it anymore.
I spent months reading and studying and writing.
In private.
At home.
Frankly your references to my identity are creepy.
And very uncool.
If you want to know something about someone, ask them.
I am not susceptible to being intimidated by stuff like this that you say, as if I am someone else:
“You visciously (sic) attacked me under the name Nicholas McGinley…”
“…whomever you are…”
This is passive aggressive nonsense.
And your demeaning patronizing undercurrents of scorn are simply insulting.
You make insults in a comment you call an olive branch.
You are either very un-self-aware, or think me a naïf.
I promise, I am neither.
Nor have you ever given evidence that you can teach me anything.
I am a sober and serious person.
When I read such things as you write from someone who says things as you say, here and on other forums, I am repulsed.
Mods: Charles. You had requested that this swiping at each other stop. I have stopped, yet this morning I have received near a dozen swipes. Please note, my lack of response.
Mods, please note, Mario has said many things that demand a response.
I was the only one that had anything snipped.
He made several comments after Charles gave his warning. I did not.
I made one, and it was snipped. His remain.
He offers and olive branch and this is my response.
Charles instructed us to disagree, but stop swiping.
Whatever that means.
No one should have to shut up while they are having their name dragged through the mud.
Silencing one person is not right.
Mario,
Are you now insisting that I not be allowed to respond to you, even as you made dozens of unanswered “replies” to me, many of which were challenges and questions?
Are you going to hide now?
Insist that you have the last word after treating another person so shabbily?
You start out calling for science and then switch to clairvoyance. Very amsuing.
Most of the major countries in Europe went through this cycle well before the USA, both in terms of infection confinement and deconfinement. Are you confusing UK pub rules with the entire continent of Europe? LOL
Instead of clairvoyance of what you estimate you are “going to see” in about 10 days, why don’t you examine the existing data from May and June.
Spain and Italy ( first affected and first out of confinement ) saw ZERO up tick as they released their populations from house arrest. France was a week or two behind in easing but also has not seen an increase.
In Italy the rate of change of new cases remained negative after restrictions were removed:
What is happening in the USA is particular to the USA and is contrary to what has happened in similar societies in Europe. You should look for why that is happening.
Dr Goldstein’s HCQ hypothesis looks credible, sadly he is not the most reliable contributor on WUWT.
The dismissal of BLM riots being a factor is rigged since it assumes the date of 26 May when Floyd was killed. That was just the catalyst, not the date of massive demos which went on for weeks.
3-5 days incubation + 3.5d lag due trailing means in the graphs ( plus possible testing delays ) gives 1-2 weeks delay.
As we know growth of infection is exponential, saying where exactly that starts is not clear.
From the graphs shown it is perfectly consistent with BLM being the cause.
More detailed state by state analysis would be more enlightening.
Great observation, Greg.
We may not see eye to eye on everything all the time, but when you are right, you are right.
No.
I think probably you are ignorant on the issue. You sound like a CNN sound bite.
Seems that the CDC has let on that COVID is on the cusp of losing epidemic status as the number of deaths is now about equal to the threshold.
They are hoping for more death certificates to keep the epidemic going.
Most lockdowns ended in May chicken little.
Geoff Bulte – July 5, 2020 at 6:26 pm
It is of my learned opinion, ……… that the above referenced “six (6) feet minimal social distancing” is little more than a “sick joke” being perpetrated upon the populace.
“HA”, they are inferring that the Covid19 flu/virus cannot “jump” more than 5 feet, 11 inches, to infect another victim.
But, “HA, HA”, the Covid19 flu/virus doesn’t have to “jump” more than 5 feet, 11 inches, …. jumping 1 or 2 inches off its current victim is far enough.
Shur nuff, a jump of 1 or 2 inches off its current victim is far enough ……. because its next victim will have moved into the “space” just vacated by the previous victim and become infected themselves …….. and the “old” victim to ”new” victim continues to spread as the crowd of people moves along.
Well, gee – it’s picking season, and I’ve heard the border crossers this year at a fifty-percent positive testing rate – and they’re all headed to sanctuary cities. Not to mention border states like Arizona and Texas.
The politically biased attack on HCQ was shameful.
If Trump was against HQC half the country would be taking it (with zinc) !
Early in the pandemic the top 40.nations for malaria had very low Covid infections compared with the 40 nations with the lowest malaria rates.
This was on Roy Spencers climate science blog in mid-March. AN UPDATE WOULD BE GREAT.
One big difference in the nations was the amount of HQC used per capita.
TEMPERATURES were also warmer in the high malaria nations.
https://c19study.com/
The studies with negative results have phrases like “late stage trial”, ” hospitalized patients”, “very late stage very sick patients”, “with advanced disease requiring oxygen”, “very late stage study”, “with severe cases”
53 studies (32 peer reviewed). The question is how many more “late stage” trials do we need to stop giving it so late and use it earlier?
This is far more likely.
Breaking: States Ordered To Fraudulently Inflate COVID-19 Cases 15 Times Actual Rate
· https://collincountytx.new.swagit.com/videos/62477
Jun 29, 2020
AGENDA
Federal Order Coincides With Massive Spike In News Cases Triggering National Panic.
Collin County is north east Dallas and encompasses Plano, McKinney and Frisco.
Here is the original video go to 15:25 · https://collincountytx.new.swagit.com/videos/62477
Check your county to see if they are counting probable cases as cases.
….all of a sudden 100’s of thousands of grandmothers are not sleeping at night
they just found out their arthritis medication…they’ve been taking for years with no problems….is deadly
Fear is a transferable commodity when a presidential election is near!
I know of no indication that HCQ is given or is effective against ordinary osteoarthritis.
It is sometimes given for rheumatoid arthritis (RA), but this has to do with it’s immunomodulating effects.
It is said to be far more effective for lupus than RA. AFAIK not as many RA patients take it as those with lupus.
Those who get it need monitoring and many need to discontinue usage after some period of time on the drug, and many are unable to take it.
See here:
“High doses or long-term use of hydroxychloroquine may cause irreversible damage to your retina (the membrane layer inside your eye that helps produce vision). This could progress to permanent vision problems. The risk of retinal damage is higher in people with pre-existing eye problems, kidney disease, or people who also take tamoxifen.”
https://www.drugs.com/ppa/hydroxychloroquine.html
Do note that the HCQ doses used against early-onset Covid-19 qualify as NEITHER “high doses”or “long-term use” as described in this resource. Just sayin’…
It is a very good question to wonder how anyone thought they knew what the proper dosage was for a usage of the drug which was 100% experimental at that point in time (and still is for that matter)?
There are numerous clinical trials ongoing for HCQ, with and without other drugs added.
Some are comparing one dose of it with another dose of it.
Some are testing one combo vs the drug by itself, and vs some other drugs, alone or in combination.
Many of them are reported to have completed but have posted no results yet.
Many more will be going on for a while yet.
Something like 40 separate ones have been terminated early, suspended, or withdrawn.
A good long look at them all on the clinical trials dot gov site is very interesting.
The cutting edge of research at this point is looking carefully at various drugs in combination with each other.
That is the approach which has given the best results with other viruses over many years.
Tamoxifen? If you are taking that as a prophylaxis for breast cancer (BIOLOGICAL females only with a high risk evaluation) – you have far bigger health worries than long-term retinal damage.
Very nasty pharmaceutical. One of the very few that doesn’t warn against pregnant women taking it – the warning is that pregnant women should not get anywhere CLOSE to it.
I only included that because it was part of the paragraph I wanted to make note of.
Nick the McGinley wrote:
“High doses or long-term use of hydroxychloroquine may cause irreversible damage to your retina…”
How is this pertinent to the discussion when low doses with HCQ over a short period work exceedingly well to stop replication if RNA viruses? Did you know that high doses of Tylenol are toxic to the liver and cause death, so what’s the point of bringing that up here? You are trying to scare people with off-topic misdirection. I see what you’re doing here. You hate low cost treatments for deadly viruses. Nice try. Stop being a shill.
Yep all those blind Malaria suffers out there! Willis E. is blind you know. McGinley is just another poser wasting every ones time with his none sense.
So wasting time is when I make a comment, but not when you decide that comment is a waste of your time and so read it anyway and then make some more comments about wasted time?
Haha!
You so funny!
sarcasm is not lost on people with high IQ… just sayin’
I am not calling you low IQ.
Apparently, and unfortunately, irony often is, eh?
Since the absence of Hydroxychloroquine doesn’t seem to have affected places other than the US, I guess the hypothesis is still born and in so doing pulls another rung out from under US exceptionalism. However it’s now a powerful placebo in the red states… so maybe there is something to it afterall.
Ok I’ll bite. You’re going for . . .
. . . sarcasm?
Probably should leave that to the pros there guy:
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2019/11/11/claim-making-fun-of-climate-doomsday-helps-reach-more-people/#comment-2844670
🙂
Many countries banned all usage of HCQ over a month ago, notably France and some other EU countries.
So it seems likely that a careful look where spikes are occurring and where they are not, could easily shed light on whether HCQ is a factor.
No studies have shown a prophylaxis effect, and some have shown that no such effect occurs when given post exposure but before symptoms have developed.
Several more results are forthcoming, including one in health care workers who have not been infected and took it for pre exposure prophylaxis.
At this point several studies have been shut down because health care workers are showing little interest any more in taking it…because it is widely regarded as having already proven ineffective against this or any other virus in human beings.
Many doctors, many hospitals, some entire states, and several countries have now stopped using it after using it extensively and finding no benefit.
There has never been any evidence of efficacy found in any animal or human studies of the drug(s).
And there are many trials, going back over a decade, that looked for an effect.
Do those who are convinced it is an effective antiviral think it works on viruses in general, or certain ones, or only this one?
If only this one, what is the basis for the belief?
The only antivirals which have shown to be effective against only one virus or virus family are those designed for use as Direct Acting Antivirals (DAAs) against that virus. IOW, ones designed for purpose.
Thousands of DAAs have been synthesized and tested that were effective in vitro, but very very few have had in vitro effectiveness translate into any value in people or animals. A very tiny number.
Millions have taken this stuff for decades and decades, and no one has ever documented any tendency for people taking them to be less likely to get a virus. And with that many people taking a drug all over the world for that long, if there was any such effect, it would have been seen long ago and be apparent now.
So one would have to believe it is only this certain strain or a common virus type that are susceptible to it.
So again, how and why would this be the case?
The people who are convinced, or say they are, were claiming they knew it to be a cure long before any reason could have been noted for anything more than a reason to test it and see.
The Chinese started all of this when they gave it to a small number of people, got an ambiguous result, and they have long since concluded it is not useful and have long since stopped using it in that country.
CQ has been shown by a one and perhaps a few studies to be a zinc ionophore (ZI), but HCQ never has been shown to have the same effect. Why not?
The ZI effect was noted not for possible use as an antiviral but as an anticancer possibility…zinc entering a cell causes the cell to self destruct.
The early studies on CQ and HCQ did not use zinc at all.
But now it seems that some want to believe that zinc is the reason HCQ works, although zinc has been not shown to be an antiviral…only to possibly shorten the duration of some colds when used as a lozenge, and this effect has been shown by many studies to not exist. And again, HCQ is not shown to be a ZI, only CQ. And being a ZI was never thought to translate into an antiviral effect, only as a cancer treatment, which it failed to work for.
The entire train of logic is non existent and full of holes from the get-go.
It is a mishmash of conflation, wishful thinking, illogical surmising, unrealistic and simpleminded extrapolation, and just plain making stuff up…which has now taken on a life of it’s own and has a seemingly fanatical cult following as an idea, with zero concrete evidence to support the notion.
Typo:
“…only this certain strain or a common virus type…”
Should be: “…only this certain strain OF a common virus type…”
re: “The entire train of … ”
AND you’re not a practicing GP … right? Like Dr. Zelenko? (Simple Y/N will do.)
So, ‘no skin in the game’, and you can argue this either way, because ‘no skin in the game’ UNLIKE Dr. Zelenko and his – are we up to +2,000 patients he treated now?
“AND you’re not a practicing GP … right? Like Dr. Zelenko?”
In fact, Dr Z seems to be no longer a practising GP:
“Dr. Vladimir Zelenko, an Orthodox Jewish doctor who rose to fame in March while promoting a cocktail of drugs he claimed had successfully treated coronavirus – including one that President Donald Trump said Monday he is taking himself, despite the drug’s potentially dangerous side effects – has announced that he is leaving the Jewish community where he has practiced medicine for decades.
In a video shared by the Orthodox news site Yeshiva World News, Zelenko announced he would leave Kiryas Joel, the town north of New York City where, until the coronavirus pandemic, he was known as a beloved community doctor.
“Things have happened,” he said speaking directly to the camera. “I’ve decided that it’s time for me to move on. I’m not sure yet what I’m going to do.”
The announcement comes after Zelenko was accused by community leaders of spreading disinformation about the rate of coronavirus infection in Kiryas Joel, leading to discrimination against residents of the village. Zelenko is also being investigated by a federal prosecutor over his claim that a study of the drugs he promoted had won approval from the Food and Drug Administration.”
I hesitate to respond , but your comment makes me wonder if you are a practicing GP?
As for skin in the game, why do you feel like you are the arbiter of who has sufficient cause to comment?
You have more skin in the game than me, or than anyone else in the world?
By the way, were you aware that Zelenko treated all those people without actually seeing or testing a single soul?
And reported results on subsequent health of thousands of people without actually ever having any means to follow up with all those people?
He reported results that implied he was in contact with and knew the details of thousands of people over a period of five days for each half of them.
How could he know this?
If he called every one of them once a week and got in touch with every one of them, and did that in only one minute per patient, how many hours did it take him to do this, considering he was working by himself while sitting at a computer?
If you are not skeptical of the claims of this guy, one wonders why not?
And why should those who want to see proof of unlikely propositions, abandon all pretense of skepticism?
Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.
I should have said several hundred rather than thousands, at least regarding his initial claims in late March.
On March 23rd, a Monday, he reported 100% success in 350 patients which he had treated since “Thursday”. which was the 19th.
And then on the 27th of March, which was a Friday, the number he claimed to have treated
(and somehow kept track of) was up to 669.
So at that point in time, he says he had “treated” 669 people and knew health status of each, while working on a computer and using telehealth conferences to “see” people, in a span of just over a week!
But he had no documentation whatsoever. Not at that point in time.
” he claimed to have treated (and somehow kept track of) was up to 669″
An unpublished paper of Zelenko has appeared. The claim is down to a study of 141 patients, of which 1 died.
In any case, right from the get-go he had positioned himself as having originated what he said was the “biggest breakthrough in medicine”…what, evah?
So at a point in time when one has to wonder how many of those 669 had even managed to get their prescription filled, since the drug was in short supply and at some point around then a directive went out from the Governor of New York that only severely ill people in the hospital should be able to get HCQ?
And after first 5 and then 9 days he already “knew” this combination would have literally miraculous success?
At that point in time it was obvious to me he had no basis for such a belief…considering the lengthy progression of the disease already known to exist a that point in time.
How did he test all those people, when testing was limited and almost nonexistent in some places, and results took many days to over a week to come back, and he was using Zoom to see patients anyhow?
False positive and false negatives alone made any such claims ridiculous, even if he did test and get results back and follow up successfully with all those people.
In short, he was obviously lying.
It is not even possible he knew what he said he knew, impossible for so many to be seen and treated and get prescriptions filled, impossible to test and know results, and meaningless to pronounce results after a few days for a disease which took weeks to progress to the critical stage for a large percentage of patients.
And once he said it and was advertising himself so shamelessly as a miracle worker, he was at that point not a doctor, not a scientist or an objective researcher or even a credible theoretician…he was a tout, a biased advocate, who had every shred of his professional reputation and credibility on the line.
Human nature alone makes it all but impossible for anyone to be objective at that point.
The fact that a few weeks prior he was making fun of anyone who was worried about COVID makes him even less credible.
But when he switched to predicting 90% of the people in his small community would get COVID, once he “invented” the cure (at that point Didier Raoult had not mentioned zinc yet) his die was cast as a narcissist with delusions of grandeur and a person known to exaggerate wildly, and make stuff up while he was at it.
When I read his claims way back at the end of March and early April, I knew he was full of it for the exact same reason I knew James Hansen was full of it back on June 23rd of 1988 on the day he gave his congressional testimony and positioned himself as he did, rewriting history, prewriting the future, and placing himself in the center of it all…as our savior.
Sorry about the double posting. This comment, starting with “I hesitate to respond…” is in reply to Jim, not Nick Stokes.
I happen to be largely in agreement with Nick Stokes and Steven Mosher on their recent commentary on this topic.
Nick,
Regarding that paper, there are huge questions unanswered by the report.
When were these people treated?
Does not say.
Who was in the control group, and how were they selected?
There is no data on them at all, so there is no way to know if they were comparable.
It is retrospective, and it is not stated how the control group was selected.
How do we know the group was not selected because a lot of that group died?
And from the comments I found this:
“The main problem with this work is that the demographics of the control group are not reported, so we have no idea if they are similar. This them means that we have no idea if the differences in outcomes are because of the treatment, or if they would be expected because of the demographies (sic) of the groups.
A subtler point is that the reported age profile of the treatment group is impossible. Group A is aged >60 years, and almost half of the treatment group was in that group. But the IQR was reported as 40-60, so only 25% of the treatment group had an age >60. I hope this was due to excessive rounding, or a similar error that can be corrected.
I am wondering if any of these people are the ones he claimed to have treated back in March?
I am wondering if the control group was also a group selected and followed who had only mild symptoms for about 4 days, and none were already hospitalized?
Treatment efficacy has advanced since the outset of the pandemic.
Were the controls from the same time period as the study groups?
But the biggest mystery is related to this part:
“Of 335 positively PCR-tested COVID-19 patients, 127 were treated with the
triple therapy. 104 of 127 met the defined risk stratification criteria and were included
in the analysis. In addition, 37 treated and eligible patients who were confirmed by IgG
tests were included in the treatment group (total N=141). 208 of the 335 patients did
not meet the risk stratification criteria and were not treated.”
So, out of the initial 335 patients in the outpatient clinic in question, all of whom tested positive, 104 and then an additional 37 were selected for treatment.
(He had previously stated that he treated everyone who was positive or showing symptoms)
The other 208 were not treated.
Later it is stated none of these 208 infected patients went to the hospital or died (page 10), here:
“The 208 patients presenting at the general practice who did not meet the risk
stratification requirements and who were not treated with the triple therapy recovered
at home and no hospital admissions or deaths were reported.”
I can see why they did not choose to use their own 208 untreated patients as the control, but instead went out and found a public record of some other people selected God only knows by what method, and compared them.
It does not even say anything about how sick they were or what the time period was they were treated, or where, or using what drugs or what SoC.
If they had used the 208 people who were positive and not treated and sent home, the group of treated patients did worse, and so no benefit would have been seen!
Besides for that, he had said that everyone must be treated early for it to work.
I had taken that to mean as soon as symptoms appeared.
But his median (or was it mean?) time elapsed in the treatment group from onset of symptoms was over 4 days…close to 5 days!
And no info was given on the control group on this parameter!
It is not even explicitly stated that any of these three doctors were the ones who treated these outpatients in the group from which the study participants was selected.
But it appears out of 335 people who tested positive, exactly one died and four went to the hospital, over a 28 day period. And that patient had cancer.
And the one who died and the four who were hospitalized were all in the ~1/3 of the initial group that were selected for treatment and inclusion in the study.
In any case, later in the report they were frank and honest about the limitations of this analysis.
Specifically, for one thing it is stated that the idea, that HCQ is a ZI and that zinc may be critical to HCQ efficacy, is only a hypothesis, not a evidenced fact or finding.
BTW…Once again a researcher has stipulated that HCQ is a zinc ionophore and used as a reference the study showing that chloroquine is one (footnote 20), even though in the same paragraph it is correctly noted that this is only a supposition, and the only reference for this belief is that chloroquine has been shown in at least one study to be one. I could give them credit for being the only persons besides myself who I have ever seen to acknowledge that HCQ is only presumed to be a ZI. That is if they had not then gone on to imply that this was a known thing a few sentences later. This is all on page 14.
Regarding the focus on zinc, there is no doubt that having a deficiency of anything, including zinc, makes it impossible for our body to have the optimum response to any threat. Zinc is known to be required for a huge number of different enzymes. I have written about it for months here. This paper uses as a reference a paper I have presented many times here on WUWT, going back several months. It is the one specified by footnote 44.
But it seems to me that this paper makes some statements that are not supported by the included reference. Specifically, this statement:
“Zinc, in addition to its role as a general stimulant of antiviral immunity…”
Seems to be contradicted by the reference paper here:
” Unfortunately, these mechanisms are not well described in the case of viral infections, perhaps because of a lack of efficacy. Calprotectin, for example, has no proven
antiviral role, nor is it significantly upregulated in response to viral gastroenteritis (17). This absence of a zinc-mediated antiviral response may reflect the “parasitic” nature of viral infection, hijacking host machinery to self-replicate. Changes in intracellular zinc concentrations necessary to inhibit viral replication may also prove toxic to eukaryotic cells for the same reason.”
But this does comport with my frequent observation that the role of CQ as a ZI was related to it’s ability to induce apoptosis and the possible applications in cancer therapy of this fact, given that failure of defective cells to self destruct is a hallmark of cancer.
Then there is this one, from the reference paper:
“Many studies have evaluated the efficacy of zinc as an antiviral agent in vitro. Unfortunately, zinc concentrations used to assess antiviral activity often far exceed physiological concentrations. Human plasma zinc, for example, ranges from approximately 10 to 18 μM, whereas antiviral concentrations of zinc can reach into mM concentrations.”
As is the case for CQ, the amounts of zinc that are found to be effective in vitro are either not achievable or would likely be highly toxic in vivo. And the agent in question has to go to a specific place to have a certain effect, and this may be prevented from occurring by one or more homeostatic mechanisms. It cannot be assumed that if one swallows some zinc, it will get sucked into virus infected airway epithelial cells by the HCQ!
We should be testing every hospital patient and outpatients too for all nutrients, and supplements given to anyone with any deficiencies of any of them.
How much use is zinc if one is highly deficient in vitamin C and vitamin D, or vitamin B-6, or one or more of any of the other essential nutrients our bodies require?
In 2020 no one should need to take zinc if they get sick, when having enough all the time might have prevented the illness to begin with!
I have known this stuff since the 1960s when I was a small child, and have become ever more aware and informed ever since.
Is there any concerted effort to make sure everyone is aware of the prevalence of vitamin and mineral deficiencies and how easy it is to prevent or correct them? Not that I know of. Many doctors, health “experts”, actively pooh-pooh the whole subject of taking vitamins and other nutritional supplements. I have never seen any of the people who tell everyone what to eat include a statement about being careful to ensure we are not deficient in anything!
A healthy and well balanced diet should provide all the nutrients we need, is what they say. They tell people to avoid the Sun, and always wear sunscreen! They know many people do not have a healthy and balanced diet, and few have one all the time, I suspect.
Imagine if we find out that vitamin and mineral deficiencies are responsible for a large percentage of infectious diseases. If zinc deficiency explains why this triple therapy works (if it actually does), how do we know the HCQ and Zpak are needed?
Why not include proper testing and supplementation in the control group?
The reference paper is a long list of reasons for believing that zinc deficiency is bad, and adding enough zinc to our body is very good for our immune system, and that many people are deficient in zinc. No ionophores required.
As an aside, the referenced paper on zinc points out a factoid that I have mentioned several times, and been subjected to much abuse on this site for saying it: “It is now understood that zinc is the second-most abundant trace metal in the human body after iron…”
Back to the paper (I never meant to go on about this for so long, but I might as well be thorough), I note that another place that the authors of the triple therapy paper assert more than the reference they cite supports, is in regard to this statement they made:
“Zinc…is known to specifically inhibit coronavirus RNA-dependent RNA polymerase.”
The implication is that this is known to be the mechanism of action for zinc against infections in people, but all the referenced paper asserts is that this effect was evidenced by an in vitro study on cell cultures infected with SARS, using a chemical commonly found in anti-dandruff shampoos, and zinc acetate as a source of zinc.
As noted, the amount of free zinc ions in our serum, and hence very probably in our intercellular matrix, is tightly regulated and has a range of 10-18uM. The amount of zinc in our cells is higher, but the amount of free ions is very small, in the pico molar and low nanomolar range.
The levels of zinc required to produce the quantified levels of reduction in viral replication noted in the paper were far larger than is ever found to exist as free ions either between or within our cells. Without ionophore, the amount of zinc acetate required to produce the inhibition was close to the level that is toxic to 50% of cells, 70uM of Zn++.
With the ionophore the effect was deemed “significant” at a ZN++ concentration of only 2uM, but it was not quantified what was deemed “significant”. The way such language is used in this type of explication, a level that is significant is anything that is not insignificantly small.
When they quantified the effect, the numbers were like this: 50% reduction in RNA synthesis when Zn++ concentrations were at ~50uM, and down to 5% decrease in replication when Zn++ was at a level of 500uM.
IOW, when looking at actual viral replication, levels need to be reached that cannot exist inside cells or in our blood serum, and even then the replication is only decreased, not halted.
What it amounts to is that there is an effect, but it is not of a magnitude, even in cell cultures, that stop the virus from replicating, unless amounts that are toxic to cells is present, and this amount is prevented from existing in our body by homeostatic mechanisms that keep all but a small amount of free ions from ever floating around.
And the reference paper even says why…it is the same reason I have been talking about for the past several months: Having a high concentration of free zinc in our cells causes them to initiate apoptosis. It is in the first paragraph of the paper referenced by footnote 21:
“Nevertheless, the intracellular concentration of free Zn2+ is maintained at a relatively low level by metallothioneins, likely due to the fact that Zn2+ can serve as intracellular second messenger and may trigger apoptosis or a decrease in protein synthesis at elevated concentrations.”
High amounts of free metal ions is toxic to pretty much all cells, which is why we do not have any evolved mechanism to fight virus infections by increasing Zn++ inside our cells, or outside of them either.
Which is why no one has ever noticed that people taking HCQ or CQ for malaria prophylaxis and who also take mineral supplements or otherwise have tons of zinc in their body, have never noticed that they never get sick from viral diseases, or never get a cold. No one ever noticed because it does not happen.
Some effects have been seen in some studies of zinc, but not in others.
The same is true for all of the vitamins and minerals.
The main part of any effect of them on diseases is seen by eliminating any deficiency.
This is my favorite part of the paper from Zelenko et al, and it goes right to the retrospective study that was the subject of the other WUWT posting from a few days ago:
“Inherent to all retrospective analyses, our study has certain limitations such as nonrandomization and blinding of treatment. Also, only the outcome data of the untreated control group based on the public reference was available but no other patient
characteristics or clinical symptoms. Therefore, confounding factors and selection bias,
among other issues, do exist. The demographic composition of the treatment group
might have also had an influence on our findings. Because many physician
appointments had to be managed by telehealth, vital parameters were not available for
the majority of patients. Viral load and ECG data were not analyzed. Treatment with
the triple therapy resulted in a numerically lower rate of all-cause deaths. However,
this was statistically not significant probably because in the treatment group only
positively risk-stratified patients were included, while in the untreated control group still
a higher number of low(sic) risk patients might had been included.”
Summary of the last bit there:
– Retrospective studies are not a very good way to compare two groups of patients.
– This study did not show any statistically significant results.
– Over two months later, when he collaborated with some other doctors and got a study written up with some documentation, it looked nothing like what he was claiming previously.
And overall:
– He has a hard time sticking to the truth.
It is a shame that so much time needs to be spent talking about this guy and his work.
Doctors are great people who devote their lives to helping others, by and large.
I have no reason to think he is not a great guy and has helped countless people with his hard work and devotion to his profession.
But there is a reason why very few doctors will ever be found to behave in the way he has behaved.
And there are a lot of reasons to scrupulously avoid making huge grandiose claims on vanishingly thin evidence, even when the subject is not so hugely consequential to pretty much everyone in the entire wide world.
@Nicholas McGinley
Is there any medication against Logorrhoe ?
If yes, have you a prescription for it ?
Just an idea 😀
re: “In fact, Dr Z seems to be …”
Thanks for raising a non-germane issue Nick Stokes; now and is now and ‘back then’ is ‘back then’.
Can you shed any light on the progress Zelenko had “back then”, or is your intent only to kick up dust and obfuscate issues raised?
Your rep precedes you, too, Nick Stokes; your street cred is zero to non-existent. Yes, an ad-hom, but a well-known ad-hom in your case (why is that? You’re well aware and no doubt grinning like a well-please Cheshire cat right about now; see: appeal to vanity/appeal to flattery.)
“vanity – definitely my favorite sin”
https://youtu.be/j6wWGtQjsq0?t=374
I hesitate to respond , but your comment makes me wonder if you are a practicing GP?
As for skin in the game, why do you feel like you are the arbiter of who has sufficient cause to comment?
You have more skin in the game than me, or than anyone else in the world?
By the way, were you aware that Zelenko treated all those people without actually seeing or testing a single soul?
And reported results on subsequent health of thousands of people without actually ever having any means to follow up with all those people?
He reported results that implied he was in contact with and knew the details of thousands of people over a period of five days for each half of them.
How could he know this?
If he called every one of them once a week and got in touch with every one of them, and did that in only one minute per patient, how many hours did it take him to do this, considering he was working by himself while sitting at a computer?
If you are not skeptical of the claims of this guy, one wonders why not?
And why should those who want to see proof of unlikely propositions, abandon all pretense of skepticism?
Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.
Nicholas,
If you are going to cite France as an example, then it is worth noting that the decision to stop HCQ use was taken by the health minister, Olivier Véran, with support from the then-PM Eduardo Phillipe. The decision immediately followed publication of the Lancet study – which we now know was based on faked data. There were screams from outraged French doctors at the time, and even louder screams when the WHO reinstigated its support for HCQ trials, but France did not.
Subsequently, in defence of his decision, Olivier Véran pointed to the confident assertions of the UK chief investigator in the UK Recovery trial which announced on 5th June that there were no clinical benefits from HCQ treatment. (A month later, we have still not seen any results from this trial other than the headline declaration.) Many French doctors were scathing about the UK Recovery trial because of dosage levels, and the fact that it was administered only to very sick patients, too late to test the claim of reduced likelihood of disease severity.
Now a judicial investigation has been announced involving accusations of ministerial misconduct against Veran and Phillipe over their handling of the COVID-19 crisis (one reason why Phillipe has just become an ex-PM probably). Some 90 complaints have been distilled down to 19 accusations. Some of the accusations relate to the corrupting influences of big pharma, and particularly Gilead, on the decision-making by the health ministry.
A paper by Didier Raoult a few weeks ago showed a strong correlation between public statements pro or con HCQ and the value of gifts received by the speakers from big pharma. He showed a Spearman rank correlation coefficient of one. Just saying…
I am still waiting for my gifts.
Nicholas McGinley: For godsake, don’t accept any gift from the fossil fuel industry! Oh, wait, Big Pharma, that’s ok unless you are a medical researcher (yes, that’s why I said it) or a practicing doc like _jim. BTW _jim, hope you enjoyed watching Mr. Stokes hit your softball out of AU. Don’t think I’ve ever had that unfortunate result.
Have a look at Turkey
The use HCQ fir everybody with symptoms, and it’s effective.
Nicholas McGinley wrote:
“Many countries banned all usage of HCQ over a month ago, notably France and some other EU countries.”
That’s not exactly true for France, although the misunderstanding is understandable considering the terrible media coverage of the so called “ban”.
It’s more complicated than a simple outright ban, this is France after all, we don’t do simple….. but I’ll try.
1- Indeed, on March 23, the French Health Minister Olivier Véran announced that hydroxychloroquine could be administered to patients suffering from “severe forms” of the coronavirus, but should not be used for “less severe” forms.
(By all accounts this would seem to be the wrong way round, but coming from him, that’s no surprise)
2- The legislative text clearly states that hydroxychloroquine and the combination lopinavir / ritonavir can be prescribed, dispensed and administered under the responsibility of a doctor to patients affected by covid-19, in health establishments which support them, and if their condition allows it. This does include therapeutic studies, and as of May 1st, at least 17 therapeutic studies have included hydroxychloquorine, some combined with another treatment, in their trials.
3- Plaquenil (Hydroxychloroquine) is still available in pharmacies to treat the pathologies it targeted before the Covid-19 epidemic such as lupus or rheumatoid arthritis, but only in the case of a prescription renewal from a doctor, or an initial prescription exclusively from specialists in rheumatology, internal medicine, dermatology, nephrology, neurology or pediatrics.
4- What you can’t do is just go and buy a packet of pills from a pharmacy and treat yourself.
Thankfully doctors can still be doctors and take care of people, even if politicians try to stop them.
It is exactly true for France.
Just reading the Henry Ford Health System in SE Michigan, US, health study on hydroxychloroquine. Was very surprised that they actually did the study, with a governor like they currently have. Last I looked, MI is not a particularly bright red state.
The study results of treating COVID19 with hydroxychloroquine seem to be quite positive for lowering the death rate.
The health system web site – www DOT henryford DOT com / news – has the announcement of the start of the study in early April, and released results recently.
The Henry Ford folks are also doing a study of HCQ as a preventative for the Wuhan virus. I think they have about 3,000 people involved.
May 25th – George Floyd’s horrible death. About 15 days for incubation period after manifestations began. Probably this explanation fits a lot better than the one in the “article”. What kind of science is this text about? Repeating Trump’s nonsense just because “yes”. Try also to see if disinfectants were also banned and one could not inject them as he suggested…
I have yet to see clear proof that HQ has an effect beyond placebo one in SARS COV-2.
Do you lie for a living?
Where exactly is the lie Derg? George Floyd did die in the day I said, Trump did suggest what I said about desinfectats (loud, clear and in a press conference) also and it’s also a “former” defender of the use of HQ as treatment. There’s no article that clearly demonstrate the positive effect of HQ in SARS-COV2. I’m not getting your point… Beyond the typical bash, your argument is?….
Your comment is accurate JN.
Trump is not a doctor or a science expert, and no one thinks he is, and no one should take anything on the recommendation of anyone but their doctor.
You may not be a Trump supporter, or maybe you are, but he did say some things that may have been better left unsaid.
I think he may be the best President ever, and was one of the very earliest supporters of Trump on this site way back in the 2016 primary.
But he is not where I go for concise statements on a range of topics.
He is a fighter, and if someone steps on his toes, he punches them in the throat.
If you treat him nice he treats you better, and if you treat him badly he will treat you worse.
He aint no school marm.
Or a paragon of virtue.
And he would not have been elected iffen he were.
He is tough and gets things done, and he has done many things I have never seen a politician do. Among them, amazingly…he has done exactly what he has said he would do, except where it was impossible because of opposition. Some of the opposition was from people who broke promises rather than support Trump’s position.
John McCain comes to mind, casting the last vote against health care reform after campaigning to repeal Obamacare every year since it was passed.
Trump did not fail us regarding this virus.
But the people in charge of public health in this country sure as heck did.
Epically and unforgivably.
Masks are useless they told us.
Only people who are symptomatic can spread the virus, they told us.
There is no evidence of community spread they told us.
They have always known that getting ahead of an emerging pandemic is the most important job they will ever have.
And when it happened, they failed us, utterly and completely.
And stupidly.
Exactly Nicholas! Agree with most you said.
Yes, they failed us, utterly and completely, and possibly criminally, if it can be demonstrated that their avoidance of HCQ was politically motivated. Possibly half of the deaths since May or June avoidable if HCQ had been properly evaluated without prejudice. That would make Fauci the greatest serial killer since Mao.
N. McGinley: Nicely said. I’m not a Trump fan, but he has never pulled a McCain. My guess is, if McCain had run and won in ’16, then discovered the FBI was STILL running FISA warrants on his people, he would not complain about it for fear of diminishing the reputation of FBI and DOJ.
“You may not be a Trump supporter, or maybe you are, but he did say some things that may have been better left unsaid.”
No, Trump didn’t say anything out of line about HCQ or other treatments for the Wuhan virus. In fact, he was careful in what he said. But it doesn’t matter how careful he is, the Leftwing Media will find some way to twist his words and distort his meanings, and the Leftwing Media influence even fools smart guys.
Right on Tom: Here we have Nick the McGinley acting like a teacher, lecturing other people with his appeals to authority.
The level of hubris in his words is unconscionable.
“John McCain comes to mind, casting the last vote against health care reform after campaigning to repeal Obamacare every year since it was passed.”
It was pure vindictiveness on McCain’s part. His vote was meant to hurt Trump but it ended up hurting the whole nation. What a pathetic final act, John! What a selfish little man you turned out to be.
John McCain turned out to be quite a vindictive, scheming low-life… I voted for him, and then later regretted that he was even one of the two choices to run this country.
Tom Abbott,
If you want to just be petty and say something nasty because we disagree about a few things, then fine, do it.
I cannot care much if a grown man wants to act like a 10 year old girl.
But once you untwist your panties, please try to actually read what is said before you get into a fresh hissy fit over nothing.
You said:
“No, Trump didn’t say anything out of line about HCQ or other treatments for the Wuhan virus.”
I did not say a single word about HCQ, and in fact did not say anything about Trump being “out of line”, anything about treatments for the virus.
That is you hallucinating some BS because you are not emotionally capable of processing actual sentences once you perceive a threat to your fragile ego and self image.
What I said was, after pointing out I am a Trump supporter, is that he said some thing that MAY have been BETTER left unsaid.
That is about as bland a criticism anyone can offer when defending someone else.
If Trump losses the election, I will blame people like you who go out of your way to act like a jackass to people who are on the same side as you politically.
I used to think of you as a rational person.
Mario,
Every word you write is a case study in self-revealed and severe mental health issues.
I was thinking you were going for the prize of Most Obnoxious Jackass On The Entire Internet, but now I am beginning to think I was wrong about that.
What is really going on with you is that you have deep-seated emotional problems.
Once you decide someone has huwted your widdle feewings, you cannot let it go.
How much are you drinking this week?
Maybe you should take a little break.
But I do not think you will.
I think weak minded, low self esteem egotists like you are never able to stop trying to externalize your emotional state.
Poor basta**
In any case, I do not hate you, but I do pity you, fool.
Nice rebuttal… and then you write this piece:
In response to: ““No, Trump didn’t say anything out of line about HCQ or other treatments for the Wuhan virus.”
You write the following
“What I said was, after pointing out I am a Trump supporter, is that he said some thing that MAY have been BETTER left unsaid.”
That you cannot understand the response is revealing. You’re panicking because you’ve been unmasked for who you are, perhaps including your name too!
That you have nothing factual to add is very disappointing.
One might hope for some light with all the heat.
“Where exactly is the lie Derg?”
JN: “Try also to see if disinfectants were also banned and one could not inject them as he [Trump] suggested”
There’s a potential lie right there, JN.
Trump never suggested anyone inject disinfectants. That is a Leftwing Media distortion of the facts. If you know it is a distortion, and repeat the lie, then you are a liar. If you do not know it’s a distortion, then you are a dupe of the Leftwing Media. I don’t know in which category you fall, but those are the two options.
Well said Tom. I love the way your crafted the sentences.
Trump did not suggest ingesting anything, he clearly stated “What if”.
You’re attempts to discredit others only discredits you.
https://www.covid19treatmentguidelines.nih.gov/whats-new/, as of July 5, 2020
“Chloroquine or Hydroxychloroquine
The Panel recommends against the use of chloroquine or hydroxychloroquine for the treatment of COVID-19, except in a clinical trial (AII).”
These “doctors” actively discourage the use of a medicine with a very little potential for harm, and reported to do a lot of good. Hippocrates is turning in his grave.
Modern western medicine abandoned the Hippocratic oath for the Hypocritic oath:
“Above all, treat, no matter the harm”
So should we just give COVID patients every drug and chemical in the pharmacopeia that does not harm or kill very many people?
Doing that would give a whole bunch of remote possibilities a chance to work.
Boner pills, stomach acid medicine, naproxen, antiparasitics, vitamin D, vitamin C, vitamin B-6, ACEi blood pressure drugs, blood pressure drugs that are NOT ACEi’s, plus a whole bunch more*…over 150 by some counts…all are “reported to do a lot of good” by someone or other.
And HCQ and CQ are not even the best antimalarial drugs we have these days, although they may be the cheapest. They flat out do not work against some strains and in some people against malaria. So why this one? Why not give all of the antimalarials and see if they work? We oughta start with the bestest and most broadly effective ones, I should think.
Or else maybe be cautious what sick people are given, since few die of this virus who are not already very old and frail and sick before becoming infected?
You know, like we have always done (at least since we emerged from the Dark Ages into the age of reason and evidence based medicine).
And stick to, you know, what we can show to be the case with evidence after careful testing?
* Some of these can be taken because they are good for general health, like the vitamins, regardless of whether they have any effect on this or any virus, because we are not healthy as we can be unless we have adequate amounts of them in our bodies, and some can be taken by substituting something we already take. Like taking naproxen if we take ibuprofen, or famotidine if we take omeprazole, or take boner pills because the best time to take boner pills is if you do not strictly speaking need to have more boners, but would not mind having more boners…
Because HCQ DOESN’T WORK despite Goldstein’s third or fourth attempt here at WUWT telling us what a miracle it is. All anyone has to do is a web search on “HCQ ineffective”. Recovery rate in many hospitals using normal treatments of electrolytes, steroids, and antibiotics for secondary infections is just as good or bad depending on your viewpoint. It likely won’t hurt you if you take it. Will help if you happen to have malaria. No worse than large doses of aspirin, which might benefit you with thinner blood. A relatively low cost psychological crutch for those who insist on the best available meds…..
Does HCQ with zinc work?
Can you point me to a study of those 2 together not working?
In the US there is not one. Even the on going whip prevent study at ford hospital does not use zinc.
The real question, why the hell do we not have one…
Can you point me to one of zinc WORKING, other than Didier’s original study on twenty some patients ?
Plus normal treatment regimen would result in the patient receiving vitamins and trace minerals if they are deficient, in any decent hospital. And antibiotics for secondary infections.
HCQ and “Eye of Newt” whatever is just a psychological crutch for those who want the best available meds, even if they might not work.
Collection of studies; click on a study name and more info appears:
https://c19study.com/
“Can you point me to one of zinc WORKING, other than Didier’s original study on twenty some patients ?”
Didier did not use zinc.
The main part of an HCQ-based treatment: HCQ+AZ given early. Each of HCQ & AZ have some antiviral activity against Wuhan coronavirus. Given together, they have a synergy, and very strong antiviral activity. +Zn is a bonus
I think that HCQ+AZ synergy is what Dr. Fauci and others missed.
The study from Ford had a result where the two of them together was almost the same as getting nothing!
It does not show any sort of additive effect. It shows the opposite, if you think that type of analysis is actually telling you anything about the drugs separate from the people treated.
Steroids have been shown to have a powerful effect on saving live3s and making for a smaller number pf bad outcomes.
So does the IL-6 blocker, Tocilizumab. It might be the most important drug class we have for the end stage of the disease.
It stops cytokine storm almost immediately and in nearly every case. Maybe actually every case.
These two are known to work against viral pneumonia and cytokine storm.
The group that got nothing had the least number of people get either of those two drugs. The group that got the combo got the highest number, by far, of patients getting IL-6 blocker and the group that got neither had the lowest rate of them (9.2% vs 1.2%).
And near the highest number of patients who got steroids. Over twice as many percentagewise as the group that got both.
And then look at the rates of comorbidities.
The group that got neither drug had a far higher rate of people with Cardiovascular Disease, and the highest rate of cancer (nearly twice the rate as the group that had the best result).
And the group getting neither drug was the oldest by a lot, and this is the most important risk factor.
The amount of care that the neither group got is starkly different than the other groups.
They were the oldest and the sickest and they got the least medications, by far. And few of them went to the ICU, even though more of them wound up dead.
Which means they died without ever getting the highest level of care.
All of these are the particulars, and none of these disparities would have happened if the patients were randomly selected to get a particular treatment and then everyone got the same level of care.
The study from France that was cited, small study early in the the pandemic, has been roundly panned and the publisher has forced a retraction, IIRC.
The patients who went to the ICU or died were dropped from the study retroactively!
See here:
“Dr. Kevin Tracey, president and CEO of the Feinstein Institutes for Medical Research in New York City, gave an even more pointed assessment of the French research.
“The study was a complete failure,” he said.
“It was pathetic,” added Art Caplan, head of the division of medical ethics at the New York University School of Medicine.”
“That statement by Andreas Voss, president of the society, said the study “does not meet the Society’s expected standard”
https://www.mercurynews.com/2020/04/10/french-hydroxychloriquine-study-called-into-question-by-publisher/
Far larger and properly conducted trials using the gold standard in methodology, have all found no benefit.
re: “The study from Ford had a result where the two of them together was almost the same as getting nothing!
It does not show any sort of additive effect. It shows the opposite, if you think that type of analysis is actually telling you anything about the drugs separate from the people treated.
Characteristic of LATE APPLICATION of the HCQ et al regimen. You know that, don’t you? You don’t know that or you do know that – its binary, either you do or you don’t.
STILL you can’t explain Zelenko. (Reading McGinley I’m still convinced “he writes much, reads little and retains nothing.” I think this is becoming a common observation, too.)
Next you have to dissemble -er- explain Brazil. Know about the protocol they are using? In Brazil? They have not been as ‘polluted’ on this subject as the English-speaking, Western, politically-correct world of politics and now ‘PC medicine’.
It’s a retrospective study, with many variables. You are tortured by your bias to see things in the most contorted way, and then call it science. Science is not wrong, you are. I suggest not listening to the drivel. It’s harmful.
Jim,
A look back at your posts over time says all that needs to be said in reply to you.
You are an anti-social psychopath.
Here is what will happen: HCQ and CQ and ZPK will be shown to have little or no value as anti-virals, and even as the mountain of proof grows ever larger, you will grow ever more shrill in your rants and screeds and non-sequitur laced appeals to authority.
Literally every single word you write is an appeal to the authority of someone who has no credibility.
Save your unhinged babbling for someone who you can still bother, Cap’n Hydrino.
It’s not better that you keep saying the same things over and over again, even though now you’re just calling people names. Get angry… yes, that helps. Remember what you said about getting in your head?
to: Nicholas the thick skulled
re: “Literally every single word you write is an appeal to …”
Again, the cite of repeated (that is, performed over and over again with improved resolution or accuracy each time) research is NOT appeal to authority. Do you need the textbook definition?
AtA definition: Insisting that a claim is true simply because a valid authority or expert on the issue said it was true, without any other supporting evidence offered.
Look at that definition again. We DO have supporting evidence and that supporting evidence can be examined (AS opposed to simply ‘taking another’s word for it’); the white papers by Mills and a DOZEN OTHERS can be read. And if this field is your specialty, Mills will welcome a lab visit. Meant to be ‘in your stead’ are the works, the measurements and analysis by others who have performed the analysis and measurements for you (and I and the interested public). But then there is you; acting stupidly, putting on a thick skulled performance OR is it you are just a complete paid ‘hack’ that doesn’t get/can’t read those reports in the first place (and given your performance the last few days, we’re no longer wondering)?
Mills and BrLP are waaaaaay beyond measuring output power in the single digit ‘Watt’ (that is, Joules/sec) range. Output powers are now in the 100’s of kW thermal range, pretty hard to miss on the “instrumentation” when the device is fired up! And in the recent runs the “ignition” power, the low voltage arc (needed to create the “pinch discharge” as the hot fusion folks do) can be turned off, the device running needs only a source of fuel (Hydrogen) in small amounts all the while the apparatus assumes a dull red color WHILE 100’s of kW worth of thermal energy is extracted via the heat exchanger.
Here, I’ll throw you a bone, “big boy’. Become familiar with a few of these techniques and we’ll review a few of the reports issued by Mills or those reviewers, validators who have used these techniques to examine what “Mills has wrought”. Hydrino Validation; there are multiple techniques wherein each one alone can prove the existence of hydrino:
• Electron paramagnetic resonance (EPR) spectroscopy: electron spin flip, spin-orbital coupling, and fluxon coupling energies.
• Raman spectroscopy: molecular hydrino and molecular hydrino dimer rotational and rotational-vibrational transitions.
• Gas chromatography: faster migration than any know gas, higher thermal conductivity than that of any known gas.
• X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy: total bonding energy of hydrino with only a single peak corresponding to a single molecular orbital.
• Electron beam emission spectroscopy: rotational-vibrational energies of molecular hydrino.
• Extreme ultraviolet (EUV) spectroscopy: extreme ultraviolet continuum radiation with a 10.1 nm cutoff corresponding to the hydrino reaction transition.
• ToF Sims shows K(K2CO3:H2)x + polymers and intense H- due to the stability of hydrino hydride ion.
———
The easiest of the above to comprehend for a layman may be “Gas chromatography”. Become familiar with that technique first THEN look for the reports that used that technique on the BrLP website.
The Canadian experience with this coronavirus is much different than the American one. What could be the reason for that?
A major one would be more than 6 times the percentage of blacks and Hispanics in the U.S. (about 30% in U.S. vs. 5% in Canada).
Another major one is that the Americans, with their ‘life, liberty and pursuit of happiness’ mindset have more of a tendency to mistrust authority and behave as they wish that Canadians with their ‘peace, order and good government’ mindset. One group was founded in armed rebellion against tyranny, the other evolved through negotiation.
Another is, look how big Canada is, and look how big the US is.
The disease spreads when people are near each other.
Canada is bigger than the US but has less people than California.
New York was by far the lions share of all cases, and likely the source from which many people all over the US first got the virus. Because more planes land there from more places than anywhere else, maybe in the world (OK checked and New York is second , London is first…but there are a bunch of other large busy cities near New York.
In any case, New York also has subways, and everyone uses them.
Tubes of people packed in tight for plenty long enough to spread germs to everyone nearby.
Large tall buildings with hundreds and thousands of people in them, all touching the same elevators all day long.
Umpteen bars ands restaurants and Uber cars and cabs and shows and movies and sports stadiums…
But even without thinking about the particular way spreading occurred in one place or another, it is obvious that infecter people spread widely apart have less chances to spread a virus to a smaller number of possible infectees, than people much more closely spaced.
Canada locked down hard and early, where they failed was long-term age care.
However that said current unemployment is 13.7 per cent and cost $100B which is expected to rise to $180B.
Current deaths 8684 versus original estimates based on at risk demographics expected deaths 180,000-220,000
So rough cost per life saved 180,000,000,000/(220000-8684)
So a bit over $850K per life saved and probably as much again in ongoing loses.
Cannot agree more. It is immoral to screw the young and middle aged to save pensioners. However, we pensioners will probably get ours. In the UK they are now proposing to tax assets instead of only income. The only good thing is Trudeau will not do it before the next election.
CB the Australian numbers are somewhat higher than Canada as the lockdown was harder
Original deaths estimate based on risk groups … 55,000 currently 105
Estimated cost $190 Billion
Cost per life saved = 190,000,000,000/(55000-105) = Bit over $3M
Australia actually has 5year cost projections of $450 billion and that blows out to $8M per life.
Two basic problems with this hypothesis.
1. Outside the statistically insignificant India Police study, there is ZERO reliable data that HCQ is prophylactic. Which would need to be true for this guest comment hypothesis to be correct Based on its graphics. Confounding prophylaxis with symptom amelioration is NOT GOOD. And, picking.purported HQC ‘ban’ ( there never were any such) time frames overlapping with mass riots and Reopenings provides way too many confounding variables dor the purported ‘rigorousness’ of this guest post.
2. Retrospective cherry picking is NOT the same as prospective scientific prediction. Reciting the former does NOT provide the latter. Including With respect to HQC, in my opinion, the jury is still out and recent Case ( not fatality) spikes in some but not all states have multiple alternative explanations.
Hi Rud,
Good comment.
I was wondering if when you said this: “Confounding prophylaxis with symptom amelioration …”, you meant to say “conflating” rather than “confounding”?
I would also like to point to the case of France, which actually did ban the use of the malaria drugs over a month ago. Looking at the worldmeters site graphs and data, there does not seem to be much of a spike since then, although there may be a small uptick forming. And as you rightly point out, this could be due to demonstrations and other causes of increased contact between people…if there is any uptick at all and not just a noise spike.
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/france/
Rud,
I’m curious what you think of the study results recently released by the Henry Ford Health System in SE Michigan. Detroit newspapers reporting on it on July 2nd. The health system web site news section announced the study in early April, and provided results recently.
There’s a thread devoted to discussing it on the JoNova site:
“Hydroxycholoroquine *may* save half the people who were going to die of Covid
“Good news on the HCQ front
“The Henry Ford HCQ study is by no means decisive, but with death rates seemingly halved (sorta, maybe, kinda) — it does show how crazy it is to ban hydroxychloroquine. It also shows it’s low risk, and with all the conflicting studies out there, that there are a lot of ways to stuff things up.”
http://joannenova.com.au/2020/07/hydroxycholoroquine-may-save-half-the-people-who-were-going-to-die-of-covid/
The denigration and ignoring of Hydroxy Chloroquine in the context of the Covid-19 pandemic is but one of the many official bungled ideas that has spread around the World. Bad ideas travel faster than good.
I suggest that this blog stop publishing conjecture, and stick with science. There are over half a million deaths, with over 130,000 in the USA. This drug has not helped, and people are still dying. It would be a good idea for the people running this site to forgo publishing articles of this nature until the facts are in. Giving Goldstein a platform here is detrimental to the credibility of this site.
Actually, there is supporting observational data in America and globally. Tens of thousands of Covid-19 deaths are attributable to Planned Parent alone. Ironically, there is only circumstantial evidence of anthropogenic climate cooling… warming… change, and none that it is catastrophic.
Wait…what?
Long live Unplanned Parents 🙂
“science”? lol. No, Henry like masks, HCQ is a political issue in the US, thats why it gets ventilated here, science doesn’t enter into it.
Exactly because I thought the treatment was HCQ AND zinc. It seems scientists at the end of life sprinkle HCQ on the patient, patient dies and say “see, it doesn’t work.”
What do you mean HCQ doesn’t work? First, most trials focused solely on giving the drug to critically ill patients already suffering from a heavy virus load. Second, most studies only looked at giving HCQ by itself and not with antibiotic and zinc at the same time.
Stating that HCQ by itself doesn’t work would probably be a true statement. But, based on the latest Michigan study, stating that HCQ + Z-pac+ Zinc given early does help lower mortality is probably also true.
It’s just like treating breast cancer. If you catch it very early and treat it, survival rates are pretty good. If you wait till late stage 4 to begin treatment, your survival rate goes *way* down. The drugs just don’t help nearly as much in late stage as in early stage.
It is not “just like breast chancer:.
The two conditions have no similarities, nor do the treatments.
Why not make a comparison to other antivirals known to work?
Or ones that do not.
You aren’t open to new ideas, Henry? This is a part of science. How else are we going to learn and advance scientifically?
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
Zn2+ Inhibits Coronavirus and Arterivirus RNA Polymerase Activity In Vitro and Zinc Ionophores Block the Replication of These Viruses in Cell Culture
Add AZ to address opportunistic infections. That said, this cocktail does not reverse disease progression, but rather complements natural functions for recovery and defense.
Good papers. Thank you.
The last time there was such an acutely phobic response, was with the election of the first Orange-American as President, which has followed with 16 trimesters of “protests” and other acts of criminal and civil disorder. I wonder how people will respond to a vaccine or other drugs with a bucket list of symptoms and warnings, including reduced viability. This is comparable to the denial, still in progress, that AIDS was primarily a trans/homo male disease, where sodomy and social liberalism (e.g. friendship with “benefits”) were a primary transmission path, that produced several hundred thousand excess deaths in America alone.
Such normally smart people sure do not understand (or maybe want to understand) how infection curves function.
When the lock downs ended, there would be more transmissions – maybe not a dramatic number but more. When the protests started, the beaches opened up, and people started ignoring social distancing there would be an increase in cases. Most of these early ones would be in the young populations that seldom end up in a hospital. Most of these would go undetected.
Additional testing would also increase the total count of cases – so let’s ignore those and focus completely on hospital admittance – those will be largely unaffected by additional testing.
After 2 to 4 weeks, there is a noticeable and fairly dramatic increase in Texas hospital cases. Many city hospitals have dedicated floors to Covid-19 patients, and these are now filled. Covid-19 patients are now being placed on other floors. ICUs are now reaching peak capacity – they haven’t reached a crisis but could if the uptrend continues. More hospital workers are now infected – bad news right now but potentially good news later on – they will have immunity.
These new cases are the result of actions and activities from 4 weeks ago. First newly infected young people infect other young people (mostly) at the rate of 2 to 3 per person. Go through a few iterations of this and you go from a few hundred new cases to thousands in 4 weeks. These have now reached older people who are more likely to be admitted to a hospital. There is NOTHING mysterious going on here.
Refusing to treat patients with Hydroxychloroquine especially early on may increase the mortality rate and hospital treatment time, but really have nothing to do with the new cases. It will eventually lead to overfull hospitals if not corrected.
The infection curve is following a completely easy to understand progression. People seem to think the number of people infected would appear in a sharp curve immediately – it doesn’t. There is a lag between taking actions (or relaxing lock downs) and the rate of infection.
The good news is we are continuing to approach a herd immunity – assuming this will apply. The closer we get the harder it is to spread the virus. If we can just keep the virus spreading below our capacity to treat severe cases in hospitals, then we have won (or at least done all we could do).
Robert
HCQ cocktail can preferably be used early on as an outpatient treatment. This reduces hospital load by decreasing admissions and if admitted reduces time in the hospital. It also may reduce deaths by 50%. ref https://wattsupwiththat.com/2020/07/03/good-quality-paper-demonstrates-strong-efficacy-of-hydroxychloroquine-mortality-rate-cut-in-half/
Robert
you say
“More hospital workers are now infected – bad news right now but potentially good news later on – they will have immunity.”
I have not seen that immunity is gained by infection. Do you have a reference for that?
Cheers
… well, let’s, you and me, cross our fingers that there is no significant immunity … more & more rungs to be pulled … let’s hope.
It’s all we’ve got … right?
They are using the blood plasma from recovered patients to impart at least partial immunity to others. This by itself means there is an immune response imparting at least partial resistance past the time of infection.
https://www.mayoclinic.org/tests-procedures/convalescent-plasma-therapy/about/pac-20486440
The question we do not have good data on is how long or strong the immunity is. By “immunity”, I really mean a “remembered immune response” that helps prevent the infection from either reoccurring or at least being as serious. There is no such thing as 100% immunity for a population – different people will have different immune responses. There are always some percent of the population who can come down with a disease more than once and in a fairly short period of time. Each disease will be different, as will the population response to it. News reports like to focus on rare events – kind of like shark attacks.
Covid-19 immune response is known to occur (the presence of antibodies in a recovered patient). I think you are asking “How long and strong is the immune response?” It appears to be short lived in many people – from 3 to 6 months there is the strong presence of antibodies in many patients. This means the body can mount a strong immediate response to a reinfection. After that time we have almost no data to support how well the immune response will react. If it’s like most other diseases responses, there will be some antibodies present in a greatly diminished number, but the production of new antibodies can be ratcheted up very quickly in most healthy patients(assuming no other confounding factors like immune suppression drugs present). This assumes the virus does not mutate it’s protein capsule into a form that cannot be recognized – but for an RNA virus Covid-19 actually has a lot of error correction built into it (kind of strange).
So, for health care workers I have an inside source to a set of real working hospitals working at ground zero (well, 0.5 anyway). So far, no one that has been out for Covid-19 infection and returned has been reinfected. This would include a period of about 4 to 5 months, but most staff that were infected have been in the last 6 weeks. Health care workers tend to be a robust group given their exposure to so many pathogens. I have no study I can point to concerning health care workers and reinfection rates – only the observations made in my local area of DFW Texas.
thank you Robert
very well stated, Robert. You have to look at *all* the data to get the whole picture. While infection data is spiking in TX and FL, actual mortality rates continue to fall. I.e. more infections, fewer deaths.
While the MSM likes to continue scare-mongering about rising infections they *never* say anything about fewer and fewer deaths per day in either state. To me this indicates a good situation, not a bad one. Higher herd immunity with fewer deaths just doesn’t seem to be so scary.
This is a good alternative hypothesis. But:
– Texas started re-opening on May 1, and mostly re-opened in May
– Asymptomatic young people are also not likely to infect others
– There are less than 4 days from infection until the coronavirus can be detected
Thus, the first derivative of the curve of confirmed cases is very sensitive to recent events. On or around June 16 it changed from <0 to quite a large positive value, and remains there until now. There might be other causes, but not from May – early June.
But even then, early HCQ+AZ (+Zn and/or oral vitamin C) is an answer
Goldstein
You speculated, “The main … cause is likely to be the drop in the use of Hydroxychloroquine based treatment …”
Do you have any data on the use of HCQ for COVID-19 over the time period of the start of the pandemic to the current time? Unless you can provide evidence that there has been a significant decline in the use of HCQ recently, then your hypothesis is dead in the water. It is unsupported speculation. That is NOT how science is supposed to be done. You need data that at least supports your position.
Have you seen the video of the fireworks in LA last night? Fireworks are illegal in LA and a reasonable speculation would be that fireworks would be rare or non-existent. The empirical evidence indicates that such speculation is unsupported.
Here is one data point. Gov DeSantis of Florida bought a million doses of HCQ, but till early June, only 20,000 had been used. So it doesn’t sound like HCQ use was holding CV at bay in Florida.
That’s because hospitals have not been requesting it, as stated in your link. Now why would that be? Because of the official decision to restrict it being used. No hospital will expose itself to endless lawsuits by going against that decision.
“That’s because hospitals have not been requesting it”
It doesn’t matter why it wasn’t used. The point is that it counters the hypothesis here (Leo G), which is that the rise in cases is because HCQ was formerly used and now is not (in Florida). This says that it was not formerly used.
The number of daily cases in Florida have been growing since June 1, not June 16. It is possible that HCQ was holding COVID-19 at bay when it was used in April and May.
I do not believe that HCQ+anything has any effect on stopping infection. If it works at all then it improves the recovery only
HCQ was DOA the instant President Trump brought it up. The MSM made sure of that. Contrast Trump’s MSM treatment To the treatment of the Governor of NY who ordered that people sick with CV19 be admitted into nursing homes, ostensibly to free up beds in the cities hospitals, despite the fact that he had two of the largest hospitals in the country Hope, and Javits center at his disposal free-of-charge. These were fully staffed, equipped for treating covid patients, and empty. Hanlon’s Razor suggests that one not attribute to malice that which can be explained by stupidity. After the thorough MSM coverage of the WA experience with mixing covid patients with nursing home residents. it seems that probability someone smart enough to be elected Governor of NY twice, is dumb enough to have done this very close to zero. He is very very lucky to be a member of the protected class progressives In this cowardly new world, who you are trumps what you did, every time.
“despite the fact that he had two of the largest hospitals in the country Hope, and Javits center at his disposal free-of-charge. These were fully staffed, equipped for treating covid patients, and empty.”
I would love to hear the explanation for not using these empty hospital beds.
Govenor Cuomo is in bed with Nursing Home Directors, so that may have something to do with it. And since Trump provided all these empty hospital beds to New York, Cuomo might have thought it would help Trump politically if he used them.
The large number of nursing home deaths didn’t have to happen and could have easily been avoided had they used the infrastructure already available to them.
And the Leftwing Media is nowhere to be found on this scandal. As is typical. It’s always a double standard with the Left: excoriate the Right for any little thing, and ignore anything the Left does wrong. It’s as predictable as the Sun coming up in the morning.
HCQ was DOA the instant President Trump brought it up. The MSM made sure of that. Contrast Trump’s MSM treatment To the treatment of the Governor of NY who ordered that people sick with CV19 be admitted into nursing homes, ostensibly to free up beds in the cities hospitals, despite the fact that he had two of the largest hospitals in the country Hope, and Javits center at his disposal free-of-charge. These were fully staffed, equipped for treating covid patients, and empty. Hanlon’s Razor suggests that one not attribute to malice that which can be explained by stupidity. After the thorough MSM coverage of the WA experience with mixing covid patients with nursing home residents. it seems that probability someone smart enough to be elected Governor of NY twice, is dumb enough to have done this very is close to zero. He is very very lucky to be a member of the protected class progressives In this cowardly new world, who you are trumps what you did, every time.
You might want to disclose to your to your readers that the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons is a conservative political lobby group, who once pushed the ideas that HIV doesn’t cause aids, that abortions are linked to breast cancer, and vaccines cause autism.
And your point is?
Once did? If you say so.
The head of the Gallo Institute also once claimed HIV does not cause AIDS. There is research the supports the abortion/breast cancer link. (Admittedly, I don’t know if that research is still valid). There were also plenty of studies, now invalidated, linking autism with vaccines.
Results of a clinical trial in Trieste which looked at COVID patients who either did or did not get methylprednisone are posted on the clinicaltrials dot gov site.
This was a prospective observational study.
Here is the write up:
https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/results/NCT04323592?recrs=e&rslt=With&cond=COVID-19&draw=2&rank=1
It appears that in this small study (170 patients), the risk of dying, or needing to be admitted to an ICU, or needing to get intubated, was far lower for people that got the steroids…cumulatively half as many people had one or more of these outcomes if they got prednisone.
I seem to recall early on that some were saying that patients should not get steroids.
So a growing body of evidence is emerging in favor of using steroids to treat people with COVID 19.
Where have you been, the evms/math protocols were testified to senate in early may.
Passed to white house the to CDC/NIH. WHICH THEN IGNORED,
https://youtu.be/unlQXGSNKOI
Posted here before, transcips available
Could a transcript be available to me?
Where have I been?
Other places, and doing other things, besides hashing this out every day for the past three months.
Just as well.
I cannot see how the people who have kept at it are any the wiser for having obsessed for all that time.
It is amazing what a person can accomplish when they step away from the internet for three months.
Chris Riley
“HCQ was DOA the instant President Trump brought it up.” That’s true. It seems crazy they would dismiss it so easily from a man who clearly gets this stuff. I mean didn’t he come up with the brilliant idea of injecting disinfectant? Trump is a genuine “stable genius.”
Simon: Orangeman has totally blown Covid response
Derg: didn’t he restrict travel?
Simon: he didn’t do it early enough!
Simon on another blog: we need open borders!
Simon: oh yeah, and drink bleach 😉
Ahhh politics. You should be ashamed.
Derg
Why should I be ashamed? I’m not the one supporting the charlatan that holds the highest office in the land. No, shame belongs to those who despite his repeated statements this is all under control, when clearly it is anything but, still support him. Anyone with an ounce of sense knows he is clueless and hypocritical in this covid fight. Why would you support that?
Simon’s drivel is to be expected. He is consistent. He’s precisely 180 degrees off on his emotional assertions.
You should be ashamed.
Derg’s right. You should thank God Trump is in office taking the heat so you can live your cynical loathsome life better than otherwise.
It’s not that you’re not informed. It’s that you’re misinformed. You have a very different view of yourself, that others don’t hold. Now if you could only see that and wonder if you have enough power to reason through towards change.
“It’s not that you’re not informed. It’s that you’re misinformed. You have a very different view of yourself, that others don’t hold. Now if you could only see that and wonder if you have enough power to reason through towards change.”
Huh? I’ll form my own opinions thank you. Don’t need some Trumpster to tell me what to think. The mere fact you support this fake of a president does not support you convincing me I have it wrong. Maybe take some of your own advice, do some reading and inform yourself. Speaking of misinformation I see the WH has just claimed the US was first to split the atom. Wow just wow. Earnest Rutherford would have something to say about that.
The Simon said: “I’ll form my own opinions thank you.”
I never said that I or anyone have power over you. Only you can change.
Why do you use the victim mentality which addresses something I never said or implied.
Your TDS is so severe that you present, hysterically off topic claims that are tangent to the conversation at hand. This does not bolster your malformed reasoning on the topic being discussed.
Simon,
It is a mistake to think the reason someone has all mixed up and completely misinformed is necessarily due to their political opinions and positions.
I support Trump, as do many other who share your views on other things.
disinfectant: agent used for destroying the germs of infectious diseases.
What do you all think of this.
https://outkick.com/coronavirus-daily-deaths-down-92-4-from-peak-have-declined-ten-straight-weeks/
New hypothesis about origin of Covid-19, most likely wrong but nevertheless interesting.
“Coronavirus may have lain dormant across the world and emerged when environmental conditions were right for it to thrive – rather than starting in China, an Oxford University expert believes.”
“The explanation for this could only be that these agents don’t come or go anywhere. They are always here and something ignites them, maybe human density or environmental conditions, and this is what we should be looking for.”
Aha, global warming, I hear. Not mentioned but will be soon no doubt.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/07/05/covid-19-may-not-have-originated-china-elsewhere-emerged-asia/
On plus side Dr Jefferson believes that many viruses can vanish as quickly as they arrive.
I hope he is correct for sake of humanity, not forgetting vanished witch, the old bat-woman from Wuhan.
It should be easy to go back and look for the virus in blood samples from around the world and look for antibodies.
If it is new as of this past fall, there should be zero blood samples from prior to that with antibodies to COVID in it.
Earliest known novel coronavirus detected in Barcelona
Further
From Spain, Barcelona University
Mario,
Nothing to say about a data dump and cut and paste?
I cut and paste nothing, ever, without attribution.
I never post whole clumps without adding some explanation from myself in my own words.
I have never, ever, once, committed plagiarism.
Well, if it can be trivially crushed, then it would not be “OMG end of the world”, would it?
Never mind Gilead’s expected jackpot and conflicts of interests that stem from this.
Then there was the censoring campaign vs. mentions of Vitamin C…
If a vaccine is forthcoming that works well, Gilead will make little if any money once that happens, and they have so far spent and given away over a billion dollars in research, manufacturing licenses, and all of the product that existed in the world or was in the pipeline as of last April.
There are oodles of studies all over the US and the world in which anyone can get remdesivir completely free of any cost, and some of them also have something else added to it.
Most of them also pay participants for their time and trouble, if those studies are like almost all trials.
All compare to standard of care treatment, which in many places is HCQ, and will change over time.
BTW, as of the end of April, the standard of care in the US is remdesivir, so any study which is tested against SoC in the US is testing vs remdesivir. Except, it seems to me, the ones using Remdesivir vs SoC.
https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/results?term=remdesivir
Nick the McGinley: Remdesivir is not free of cost. Nice try. And it is not a treatment except at late stages, where it has not been shown to prevent death. It has been shown to reduce the time by a few days. HCQ on the other hand is almost free as its cost is low and it’s able to be taken OUTSIDE of hospitals which is the goal… to not need to be done in a hospital, where risk of death increases.
Have you figured out yet, what I taught you, that HCQ is a Zinc ionophore, or are you going to stay on record as a denier.
You have no idea what you are talking about.
You have grown quite tiresome.
For the last time, it is presumed by some to be one based on CQ being one, but no rationale is given for this presumption.
Slight changes in a molecule can completely alter the effects it has chemically, and even more huge ones are likely biologically.
Zelenko and his doctor co-authors agrees with me, when he feels like admitting it.
“Also, chloroquine and probably HCQ have characteristics of a zinc ionophore resulting
in increasing intracellular zinc concentrations.”
From preprint report by Roland Derwand, Martin Scholz, Vladimir Zelenko
It may be one, and you can presume anything you want.
The reason we had to wait for thousands of years to have a method of finding out what was what that actually worked, was because people think they can presume things they feel rather certain of.
There are two kinds of assertions. The kind with some evidence to back them up, and guesses.
Here is a list of thousands of places all over the world, and over two dozen separate trials (29 in fact)that are currently enrolling or soon will be, that anyone can sign up for and get free remdesivir and even maybe get paid for taking it, as well as free associated care.
29 studies that are or soon will be enrolling:
https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/results?term=remdesivir&recrs=ab
Study #5 on this list is testing remdesivir plus the monoclonal antibody against the IL-6 cytokine, against remdesivir plus placebo. So the placebo arm even gets remdesivir.
There is lots of data showing that IL-6 blockers drastically lower the odds of a bad outcome in people with rheumatoid diseases, and likely everyone else as well.
So that one plus remdesivir?
Combos are the best chance for an outright cure.
Interactive map of the locations all over the world where the studies are being done:
https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/results/map?term=remdesivir&recrs=ab&map=
On top of that, expanded access is still taking patients. Expanded access does not involved any chance of getting a placebo.
Many of the trials are now combining remdesivir with one or more other drugs, and comparing them to some other drug or combination.
In some of them, the study drug is something else besides remdesivir, and that other thing plus remdesivir is being compared to remdesivir and supportive care alone.
Because in the USA, since end of April, Remdesivir is the Standard of Care for COVID patients in the US.
Until the supply that was given away is used up, no one in the world has or will pay for remdesivir.
At some point in the future, maybe August, Gilead will begin to complete production and ship the first remdesivir that they have ever charged a single penny for.
If, and only if, the drug gets FDA approval.
It is illegal to sell a drug which has not been approved by teh FDA. It is still an investigational medicine in the US
The US government has contracted to buy the entire initial supply, and at a price of $320 a vial, IIRC, once approval occurs.
Gilead says that the vast majority of people get all of the benefit of the drug in the first five days, and so 6 vials will be how much almost everyone needs.
Read a book or something, brain bounces around loose in an empty head.
https://stories.gilead.com/articles/an-open-letter-from-daniel-oday-june-29
There are laws almost everywhere mandating every one has insurance.
Promises are in place in some locales regarding the government paying for all covid related medical care.
A full course of remdesivir will cost a small fraction of the cost of one day in a hospital.
Data indicates it saves something like $12,000 off the average cost for a person who is hospitalized.
This is what thinking people call “saving money”.
In addition to the trials listed, Gilead is about to launch a trial of an inhaled version of remdesivir, which means it will be used be used at home, and it may mean it is very effective, since it can be given to people as soon as they have symptoms, and maybe sooner, if they get exposed and are not even showing symptoms yet. Plus since it is taken by breathing it in, it may go right to the cells that are infected and work like a frickin charm.
Who knows?
Everyone will, once the testing is underway and some results are reported.
And no matter what happens, clinical trials are always free of charge and most often pay participants.
Those are facts.
Do you ever get tired of being wrong?
No one in the US has ever paid for remdesivir at this point in time, unless it was bootlegged.
It has been granted emergency use authorization.
The EU has granted some sort of temporary authorization I think. Conditional authorization.
Japan just announced approval is granted, I just saw.
It is possible and maybe likely it is approved in more places just in the past few days.
Gilead has licensed other companies to make the drug for use in less affluent countries, and AFAIK they did not charge any money for the licenses.
Mylan has announced the will make a generic version for use in India at a price of $64 a vial.
They were gonna charge $65 but they got haggled down to the low low price of only $64.
India has granted emergency restricted use.
127 other countries have been granted a license to make it for use in their country and charge whatever the hell they want.
Like they have long done with just about every drug they have invented.
Ok, here is the list of places that have approved it or whatever.
https://www.reuters.com/article/healthcoronavirus-gilead-remdesivir/factbox-countries-where-remdesivir-is-approved-or-supported-for-treating-covid-19-idUSL4N2EA2LZ
Maybe your communist anti capitalist ideology forbids the notion of someone or some company inventing something and then selling it for money, but it is working out pretty well for people who believe a person owns something they create or invent, especially compared to all of the alternatives.
Nick McGinley: The amount of words you puked, failed to address anything I stated. Words matter. Lots of words cut and pasted to look like a response, is a sign of laziness.
Advice to you, Next time you make a claim about something I said, cut and paste what I said, and then respond.
I think I see two entire sentences that are a quote from somewhere else.
Do a search for any short group of the words in my post…I wrote it all except the quoted title of the paper that is evidence you have no idea whatsoever what you are talking about.
You do mot read anything, that much is obvious.
If you read it you would know how stupid you are making yourself look with every comment to me.
You really must be a dolt. An actual imbecile.
Not to mention a complete jackass.
Your lack of ability to counter me is on display through your liberal use of ad hominems. Look up what that means… and understand it before you respond again.
You’re implying incorrectly that I wrote something else, as you go on to admit you cut and pasted from someone else. You cut and pasted previous posts you’d made. You also earlier were schooled when you said you never appealed to authority and someone showed you were rife with those appeals. You’re unaware of yourself or dishonest or both.
As difficult for you as it is, you need to accept my corrections of your behavior to your benefit.
Mods
Charles
Anthony
Here I am challenged directly to “counter” what he says.
I am not able to keep up with the volume of instances this has occurred, in real time.
They didn’t deliver fast enough to matter.
But the vaccine will be half-baked. And likely made/sponsored by the same people who occasionally let slip that they consider vaccines a valuable way for reducing the populations.
Trump also touted bleach. People haven’t gone with that either. For a blog that promotes science this is thin gruel.
He didn’t. This is a carefully cultivated falsehood. He used bleach as a metaphor which is completely different.
+1 Ed. The MSM and the Democrats also mocked him for mentioning carbonic acid. Until they found out that it *is* used in the lungs for some specific purposes. The MSM and the Democrats just can’t keep themselves from attacking him even when what he says is the truth.
Trump also touted bleach. </i)
I'm not sure he used the term bleach but I could be wrong. I thought he said 'disinfect' which can mean anything. Some groups have been looking at UV light at wavelengths which can 'disinfect' or 'kill' the virus but are unable to penetrate the human tissue. Some have even suggested it could be used internally.
There's usually a kernel of truth in most of Trump's statements. Unfortunately he doesn't always have a full grasp of the details. He may be on firmer ground with HCQ, though. Used in the early stages of Covid-19, HCQ (+ combinations of Zn &/or Azithromycin) does seem to some deter disease progression.
ULTRAVIOLET LIGHT IN TUBERCULOSIS OF THE LARYNX
Easier now with LED incubated directly into the larynx
Russia Says It’s Developing UV Light Therapy to Treat Coronavirus
“There’s usually a kernel of truth in most of Trump’s statements. Unfortunately he doesn’t always have a full grasp of the details.”
Well, it depends on whether you get your knowledge of what Trump said, from Trump, or from the Lying Leftwing News Media who constantly distort everything Trump says.
Trump: “Some groups have been looking at UV light at wavelengths which can ‘disinfect’ or ‘kill’ the virus but are unable to penetrate the human tissue. Some have even suggested it could be used internally.”
That’s a Trump quote, isn’t it? It sounds like to me Trump has a grasp of what he is saying. I happened to hear that press conference live and Trump never encouraged anyone to take disinfectant or bleach (he never even said the word bleach, that was a made-up lie from the Lying Leftwing News Media). Trump was just musing on some of the things he had been discussing with Dr. Fauci and Birx. And of course, the Lying Leftwing News Media turned the conversation into something completely different from what it was (a false reality) and then dupes and liars on the Left use these Leftwing Media lies as ammunition against Trump. And that is the purpose for their lies.
I think we have had several leftwing liars/dupes already peddling this nonsense on this very thread.
What gets me is when you show some of these leftwing liars/dupes the errors of their ways by posting the actual Trump transcript which clearly exonerates him, and then they just continue to tell this lie like the correction never happened. That’s when you know the people doing that are actually liars and not just dupes. You deliberate liars know who you are. And so do we. 🙂
You know, you lose all your credibility when you become known as a deliberate liar. Several people have lost that credibility in this very discussion. One can’t give the benefit of the doubt to a deliberate liar. At least, I can’t and won’t. Show you are a deliberate liar, and that’s what you will be. And who wants to discuss anything with a deliberate liar? Hell, they’ll probably lie to you. How worthless is that discussion?
Amen that. I say, if one knows they need to lie to get across some point, the point is absent, nefarious etc.
Trump didn’t touch bleach, you are seriously misinformed. Trump didn’t tout HCQ either. Read the transcript. He mentioned it, but hardly endorsed it.
Jeffery
Trump did announce that he was taking a regimen of HCQ, prophetically. I can see how some might construe that as not endorsing it as a cure.
Trump *never* advised anyone to take HCQ.
Trump had encouraging things to say about it like it looked promising but that’s as far as he ever went. He was always appropriately cautious in what he said about HCQ.
Clyde,
Sarcasm?
No matter what he said or did not say, has no bearing on what will happen when someone puts it in their body when they are infected.
I just was wondering…do you think he will be able to speak frankly about the results of the trials, given the attitudes of some of his supporters?
Have people really decided that support for Trump depends on HCQ curing Covid?
Do they think it has to be because a lot of people had high hopes?
It sure seems like many people feel his hopeful commentary means it is objectively true that it therefore will work, ipso facto.
Vuk. Check to see if study authors receive funding from CCP.Unfortunately Oxford, indeed large numbers of U.K. educational establishments feed at the communist trough!
Nicholas McGinley I have take four medications. The list of side effects reads like death sentence,not a treatment. It would seem that you may well be fortunate enough not to be in that position. Good grief, Asprin is dangerous in certain situations!
Trust you all stay safe and well.
I take medicines as well.
Almost everyone in the US who is my age does.
As for side effects, some of any drugs’ reported side effects may appear rarely, or be very mild.
And some may be just things people report and have nothing to do with the drug.
Thinks like headache, nausea…
Funny true fact: Most drugs have been tested against placebo in one or more clinical trials.
In every case of which I am aware, the placebo patients report side effects, and these are sometimes more extensively reported than the study medication.
If one were to combine all studies ever done and make a list of all side effects recorded for placebo, I bet it would be the longest list of any substance ever given to a person.
An MD once told me: “All medicines are poisons, it’s a matter of balancing the risks and benefits.”
Another interesting read re: HCQ. https://anthraxvaccine.blogspot.com/2020/06/how-false-hydroxychloroquine-narrative.html
The anti-HCQ campaign has been a concerted one based on lies and disinformation, and further fueled by TDS. The tactics used are very similar to those used in the War on “Carbon”. It no doubt has been responsible for thousands of deaths, much human misery, and great economic damage. Those responsible indeed have blood on their hands and should be held responsible.
+1
Somebody should have mentioned the Italian study where they determined that out of 65,000 Italian HCQ RA & Lupus patients, only 20 had contracted the virus (and we hav no info on their compliance with any specific HCQ regimen), no ER or ICU visits, and zero deaths.
Link, please.
This opinion piece in the wsj.com:
https://www.wsj.com/articles/these-drugs-are-helping-our-coronavirus-patients-11584899438
… seems to be the first to claim real prospects for HCQ
I couldn’t read the whole story. I cancelled my Wall Street Journal subscription many years ago.
Thanks for the effort.
The same university,Oxford recently carried out carried out a study on HCQ. Interestingly but not unexpectedly,it was panned. The eminent Prof leading the study thought it appropriate to administer very high dosage levels.This was raised by a French medical expert on FranceSoir .The Oxford Prof (same interview) implied that the dosage was determined by dosages given for other serious diseases. The France guy was taken aback.
Another Brazilian episode designed to fail. I would wager a large sum that the said enterprise collected its grant!
Putting down a marker; post coming later on the use of, and experience docs have with HCQ, Zn and AZ in Brazil.
14 case studies show good results in HCQ Prophylactic and Early Treatment for COVID-19
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1vDD8JkHe62hmpkalx1tejkd_zDnVwJ9XXRjgXAc1qUc/edit
Nice: But McGinley thinks this is certainly not evidence of anything but Fake Snake Oil. If Nick is against it, I think it has value… as he is known as an anti barometer of good advice.
😀
A few month ago he responded, in an argument that zinc deficiency wasn’t a real thing because “zinc was the most abundant” element in the human body.
He was told by a few people that he was wrong.
He responded by saying he misspoke … he meant that “zinc was the most utilized” element; not even recognizing that his clarification contradicted his original intent.
(confidence, & lots of words, is only an indicator of the ability to confidently use lots of words. Alone, it is not an indicator of anything useful or positive; combined with the stubborn inability to reason it may well be useful as an anti barometer.)
Hi DonM… I read that today… his statement about Zn being in every living things and ergo no one is deficient. The utter nonsense / drivel.
I was going to respond with a question that he would not answer… which is, Nick the McGinley, “Why are vegans typically Zn deficient?”
He seems to play the roll of a doctor, a quack of one, but none the less, he has been coy. Do you know what he does for a living?
Wheat germs have a lot of Zn
poppy too, as has seasame and pumpkin seed.
Thx Krishna. Yes, they do! Seeds are very good foods… and I love the animals that eat them for me 🙂
… for a living?
I don’t know, maybe a portion of his work is on these pages.
Charles the moderator,
Am I expected now to simply not respond to this?
People are lying, and having whole conversations about me, which I was not aware of.
I do not even know how many of them.
Am I not allowed to respond?
Anthony?
Mods?
Don,
Why not show the actual conversation?
It is wrong to lie about something that someone else said.
Are you going to cry to mommy if I respond to you, Mario?
“precautionary principle”
Many experts said the W.H.O. should embrace what some called a “precautionary principle” and others called “needs and values” — the idea that even without definitive evidence, the agency should assume the worst of the virus, apply common sense and recommend the best protection possible.
“There is no incontrovertible proof that SARS-CoV-2 travels or is transmitted significantly by aerosols, but there is absolutely no evidence that it’s not,” said Dr. Trish Greenhalgh, a primary care doctor at the University of Oxford in Britain.
“So at the moment we have to make a decision in the face of uncertainty, and my goodness, it’s going to be a disastrous decision if we get it wrong,” she said. “So why not just mask up for a few weeks, just in case?”
http://archive.is/HWGLR#selection-1037.0-1045.216
He is parroting Taleb. But yeah, it’s a good principle.
Unfortunately, even when applied, it seems to evaporate on contact with conflict of interests (like with HCQ and Vitamin C).
As I read through the comments here I am somewhat perplexed, as it appears that nobody commenting on this July 5th post have read the July 3rd post about the recent study showing a 50% reduction in mortality when using HCQ early in the course of treatment. I only see one mention of that study at all by Roger Knights referring to JoNova’s site.
Am I missing something?
Exactly: McGinley does not think the study is worthy, he’s used lots of words.
No mention of side effects today, what’s that with Nich… ?
I taught Nick a lesson about gaslighting.
I and others are fed up with his emotional pukes and data dumps of nonsense mixed up with solid science… What McGinley needs to learn (and this will reduce his post length) is to remove the drivel and leave the good science. But Nick can’t have that… because it would not advance his agenda, whatever that may be.
Please take apart any of my pukes and explain what is wrong, in detail.
Or even give a single example.
It should be so easy for you.
And so beneficial for those you want to bequeath your insight upon.
Okay Wayne’s World.
No one is expecting you to be able to read all those werdz.
Everyone knows why the type of study from the other day is far less meaningful than a randomized clinical trial in which the protocol and randomization is done before anyone is treated.
The Look at the data table.
If you know how to examine and interpret data, or if you took the time to read that comment board, you should know several times over why that study does carry much weight.
As for talking about another post…the usual way to do it is to comment on that article on that comment thread, and on this article on this comment thread.
If that concept escapes you, which you clearly say it does, then you have answered your own question about why you are perplexed.
Out of all of your “werds”? sarc.
Look, we understand what a double blind study means… We also know about politics and bad data, (think surgisphere) and all of the retracted publications (and piss poor tests designed to not follow the correct HCQ and Zn protocol) you still use as evidence.
What you do not understand is that your ilk are doing harm, while hiding behind words, which prevent people from known treatments that drastically reduce the effects of the disease with almost no downside.
If you are arguing against what I just wrote, you’re not worth listening to ever again.
That about sums you up in several of sentences.
NMG doesn’t worth any further word. We know in the meantime, that he seems to be on the payroll of Gilead, following his “comments” and ad hominems over the last month since the discussion about HCQ started here. His aversion against HCQ drops out of his pores from head to the feet.
He apparently gives the Michael Mann of Covid-19.
Hi Krishna: You have been one of the voices of reason…
Do you know anything about NMcG? Where he works, what he does? He’s been coy about who he is.
The troll that he is, popped up here at WUWT and a few months ago. I had several polite questions for him and was very polite, and then out of nowhere, he made up some generalized lie about me as being one of the WUWT authorities… and that I was lying about things and contradicting myself.
For the life of me, I do not understand how he deduced that.
I am certainly not one of the WUWT authorities. I come here to learn, and once in a while I get into a tiff with bullies, like Nick the McGinley. So, now I am watching him as he tries to misinform people.
Mario, in one of his comments above, he told to teach students in chemicals.
I imagine a talk of 45 minutes in front of the students. 5 minutes of these he provides infos, while the other 40 minutes , he is sunbathing in his wording full of meaningless nonsense.
Thank you Krishna:
He does tend to blather on, and I imagine he is rather polarizing.
There is an old saying:
Those who can, –Do; Those who can’t, –teach.
I was a teacher at a high school between engineering and management school for a semester. It was a fun job, not difficult. And I got the sense that teachers grew into the idea that they knew a lot because they were the source of information. Now I should not generalize because like with any industry, there’s good, bad and best among them.
LOL:
“There is an old saying:
Those who can, –Do; Those who can’t, –teach.
I was a teacher at a high school”
– M. Lento
I was a teacher at a high school (6 months) earning money for college as I said. That is how I can speak from experience, actually immersing myself into teaching at 20 years old, I taught Spanish.
Why do you make it so easy to counter your nonsense. You’re just asking for people to put your dishonesty down.
Can’t you just try to get one thing right?
Mario and Krishna,
“The troll that he is, popped up here at WUWT and a few months ago. I had several polite questions for him and was very polite, and then out of nowhere, he made up some generalized lie about me as being one of the WUWT authorities… and that I was lying about things and contradicting myself.”
Everyone knows I have been commenting here very extensively for a number of years.
6 or 7 maybe?
I know very well Mario has nothing to do with this site, and that Krishna is not even an American.
He can barely converse in English well enough to be understood.
Nick: I never saw your name and did not track that you were using other names. Anyway, from my perspective, your name just popped up… why are you trying to argue about that? I do remember menicholas but learned today that you are afraid of being doxxed again so that is why you change your name.
Your reading comprehension is almost as bad as Don M.
I used Menicholas years ago.
You just showed up here a few months ago.
I have been a regular here for years.
You will not find anything I have ever said that is made up or factually incorrect.
I have never been doxxed, I do not know where you got that idea…NEVER, until YOU started asking around about where I work and live so you can “keep an eye” on me.
Do not worry, I am gonna quote your words to Gans and the letter of the law.
Everyone. Dial back. It’s over. Don’t care who started it.
Charles, I appreciate your need to maintain order and decorum.
But there are entire conversations in which I am demeaned and insulted and lied about.
Am I not to respond?
Mods?
Anthony?
Well, though directed toward Nicholas. The study is retrospective. This means that all events have run their course and we are looking backward in time to see how things turned out. Lots of people were admitted to a particular hospital network between early March and Early May. Some got treatments of various sorts. They applied various hazard ratios to these patients based on their experience with their network population. They found that patients receiving HCQ did better than prognosis. They also paired a subset of patients who had similar risk profiled and then looked at paired difference.
The doctors involved noted the deficiencies of their study — that it was retrospective, not blind, and thus susceptible to bias. Fine. There are also a few odd observations (like HCQ working better than a combination), and apparently a typo in the reported age range of a subset of patients. People denounced the study almost from the get-go. Others hailed it as a breakthrough. It is not gold standard, but it was worthwhile doing, and probably worthwhile to read. There is unlikely to ever be a gold standard study involving HCQ.
“There is unlikely to ever be a gold standard study involving HCQ.”
Responding to your nice post, I agree with what you’d written. The sad thing is that your last sentence being true to date, is SOLID proof that something is very wrong.
The other thing is that most of the treatment using HCQ was not done in the way it is known to work best… given with Zn and early. Even so, the retrospective showed that even when used incorrectly (late and without Zn) it was better than any other treatment on the planet. Imagine a good study with the cocktail correctly implemented!
I think, doing the right study would prove, without doubt, that the shills like McGinley should have known their side of the story was false. I see parallels to the Mueller investigation… Nick is the equivalent Andrew Weissmann where that “study” was filled with bias against Trump. To save face for the injustice of it all, their version of Nick the McGinley said “We could not exonerate” which is preposterous… since that’s not what a prosecutor’s roll is!
The sins being done are atrocious…
There are a load of randomized clinical trials that have and/or are being done. Some have reported results, some are about to, some have been discontinued for various reasons.
This study claims that it was consecutive patients over their entire system, from March 10th to May 2, as you noted.
But now look at this one I just found from last month. Same hospitals, a study looking at two time periods in March and how their protocols had changed over time.
It mentions several drugs and treatments not mentioned in this recent paper.
But the recent paper claims it is consecutive patients.
The older one makes a point of highlighting the improvement in outcomes that took place between Early March and Later in the month.
Patients got remdesivir, they got blood plasma, and so on…but these different treatments happened because the doctors were learning.
So comparing regimens like this one does is comparing people treated at different phases of the outbreak. At least partially.
And some patients got remdesivir and plasma, everyone got it at a certain point in time…but they do not mention it, only these four groups.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/health/medical/henry-ford-detroit-finds-early-steroid-use-helps-stunt-covid/ar-BB15FaS5
What say you to this?
I have no idea how to reconcile these two reports.
Except to be pretty sure they did not give us the whole story in this latest paper.
I wonder if you and I are reading the same recent study. What i read, and found in table 1 of the report I have is a discussion of steroids given to subsets of patients, and the steroids included prednisone and its methylated version. Perhaps I don’t see your point, but it seems to me there is no reason to condemn this newer report over the steroid issue.
Just to make sure of our versions, I am reading:
PII: S1201-9712(20)30534-8
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijid.2020.06.099
I noticed on another thread that you had used the handle menicholas at one point. I liked many of those posts, and wondered what had become of menicholas.
Kevin,
I am a little unclear about which report you are referring to re my condemning it?
I want to say, condemn is a little strong for my preference, if you do not mind me saying so.
I try to keep my criticisms factual, and my opinions more nuanced.
Which report is “this newer report over the steroid issue”?
In any case, I left a lot of comments on the first thread on this a few days ago, dealing with that specific report.
My point is that something fishy is going on.
The report issued by Henry Ford Health Services (HFH) this past week is a large study which gathered data from a huge number of patients over nearly two months.
In that report, the describe the patients as every person who showed up with COVID from March 10th to May 2nd. Please correct me if I got the exact dates.
Two months.
It seemed to be stated that it was every one of the people they treated in that time.
But in their data from this report, they do not make any mention of using remdesivir on a single patient.
They do not mention using plasma on a single patient.
Those are not in their data sheets.
They make one mention of remdesivir, but do not say anything about why no patients are listed as getting it.
There is also the issue of ECMO vs ventilation, and any other medications and treatments, like positioning patients so they could breathe more easily.
Many of these were ideas that were come upon and passed around to various hospitals at a certain point in time during that interval.
In other words, they were things that had not been done, but at some point were done.
So over time the protocols changed.
They cut off the study at the time that remdesivir became the standard of care, at the beginning of May.
But many people were getting it before that.
So the question is, why does the new paper say nothing about any other drugs or treatment the patients they are talking about did or did not get?
They were clearly using other things.
They used remdesivir.
They used plasma.
They used positioning.
These were not mentioned or accounted for.
But they were all things that were likely done starting at some point in time, or where done to some patients but not others all along.
The question I am asking is, how could they not include other treatments and medications those people got, but are not listed in the tables or included in their calculations?
They left out critical information that had a decisive effect on the outcome of many patients.
Left it 100% unsaid wheat else some people got, and who it was, and when.
They also did not include info on WHEN in the two month interval the four groups of patients were treated.
It was not random in time, it was sequential.
Is that patient list really every patient during that interval?
If not, they cherry picked.
(They subtracted some people while saying it is a sequential compilation of everyone.)
If so, they left out info on other things that were given to those people, or not given.
I will say it plainly.
They seem to have committed fraud.
See here:
“In addition to early-use steroids, Henry Ford medical teams have used a combination of Remdesivir, hydroxychloroquine, Interlukin 6, convalescent plasma, proning and other measures to provide treatment for COVID-19.”
Remdesivir, proning, early vs late steroid use, convalescent plasma, and “other measures”.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/health/medical/henry-ford-detroit-finds-early-steroid-use-helps-stunt-covid/ar-BB15FaS5
Kevin,
I am a little unclear about which report you are referring to re my condemning it?
I want to say, condemn is a little strong for my preference, if you do not mind me saying so.
I try to keep my criticisms factual, and my opinions more nuanced.
Which report is “this newer report over the steroid issue”?
In any case, I left a lot of comments on the first thread on this a few days ago, dealing with that specific report.
My point is that something fishy is going on.
The report issued by Henry Ford Health Services (HFH) this past week is a large study which gathered data from a huge number of patients over nearly two months.
In that report, the describe the patients as every person who showed up with COVID from March 10th to May 2nd. Please correct me if I got the exact dates.
Two months.
It seemed to be stated that it was every one of the people they treated in that time.
But in their data from this report, they do not make any mention of using remdesivir on a single patient.
They do not mention using plasma on a single patient.
Those are not in their data sheets.
They make one mention of remdesivir, but do not say anything about why no patients are listed as getting it.
There is also the issue of ECMO vs ventilation, and any other medications and treatments, like positioning patients so they could breathe more easily.
Many of these were ideas that were come upon and passed around to various hospitals at a certain point in time during that interval.
In other words, they were things that had not been done, but at some point were done.
So over time the protocols changed.
They cut off the study at the time that remdesivir became the standard of care, at the beginning of May.
But many people were getting it before that.
So the question is, why does the new paper say nothing about any other drugs or treatment the patients they are talking about did or did not get?
They were clearly using other things.
They used remdesivir.
They used plasma.
They used positioning.
These were not mentioned or accounted for.
But they were all things that were likely done starting at some point in time, or where done to some patients but not others all along.
The question I am asking is, how could they not include other treatments and medications those people got, but are not listed in the tables or included in their calculations?
They left out critical information that had a decisive effect on the outcome of many patients.
Left it 100% unsaid wheat else some people got, and who it was, and when.
They also did not include info on WHEN in the two month interval the four groups of patients were treated.
It was not random in time, it was sequential.
Is that patient list really every patient during that interval?
If not, they cherry picked.
(They subtracted some people while saying it is a sequential compilation of everyone.)
If so, they left out info on other things that were given to those people, or not given.
I will say it plainly.
They seem to have committed fraud.
See here:
“In addition to early-use steroids, Henry Ford medical teams have used a combination of Remdesivir, hydroxychloroquine, Interlukin 6, convalescent plasma, proning and other measures to provide treatment for COVID-19.”
Remdesivir, proning, early vs late steroid use, convalescent plasma, and “other measures”.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/health/medical/henry-ford-detroit-finds-early-steroid-use-helps-stunt-covid/ar-BB15FaS5
That is what I was asking about.
I was wondering what you think about all of this.
it is not what they did say in the newer paper, it is what they left out.
Kevin,
You said:
“I noticed on another thread that you had used the handle menicholas at one point. I liked many of those posts, and wondered what had become of menicholas.”
Yes, I had always said why I did not use my actual name. I was the National Service Manager(I also held other positions and did much work besides managing service) for a private company in the Lake and Wetlands Management industry.
When I left that company, I began to use my name.
I have never been cryptic about it, and have talked about this several times.
But no one can read every thread and every comment here.
I can barely keep up with one of them sometimes.
So I am not surprised if few people are aware of this.
Since I changed to using my name, I have not switched around.
Prior to Spring of 2017, IIRC, I used a handle, Menicholas. After that, or thereabouts, I have used my name.
And I did say a few times who I was earlier, although maybe not explicitly.
I discovered this and other blogs only within the past 7-10 years, I do not recall exactly when off the top of my head.
Prior to that, I was always very active online, commenting on many sites…typically the comment sections of news sites and such.
But I also spent year at single sites, devoted to a particular issue or set of issues.
I commented for a long time at a place that was where all comment boards for newspaper stories was.
Like, if you were reading the Orlando Sentinel online, and commented on a story, you were directed to a site called Topix.
That site and all comments records was deleted a few year ago.
I had years of commentary there, on global warming, hepatitis C, the financial crash, red light cameras, UFOs, prayer in schools, intelligent design, etc.
All erased.
Then I began trading, and spent years on a few sites talking about trading and issues related to certain stocks and certain subjects.
Notably energy and commodities, biotech…especially biotech vis a vis clinical trials… new drug research, etc.
And I spent years on the Internet Scrabble Club site, where I was for a few years the highest rated player in the world using TWL dictionary and playing 3 minute games with double challenge rules, no escape.
That was when I got fast at typing.
Try it sometime if you want to see how fast you can think, read, and type.
A whole game of scrabble in three minutes! Shew!
I averaged about 1.5 bingos a game.
Impossible to cheat in a three minute game.
If you look away you will lose the game.
Double challenge means if someone plays an invalid word, and you challenge it, they lose their turn.
No escape means if someone is about to lose, they cannot log off and prevent a loss.
isc.ro
Great site.
Lately I spend a lot of time doing lumosity.com.
It would be fun to be able to challenge people online to a public match at some of those cognitive challenge games.
Anyway, that is what has become of me, as far as the interwebs is concerned.
Thanks for asking (sort of) and thank you for the kind words.
And this is an evidence of decrease in prescribing:
Dr. Zelenko: “Each day I get emails from people who want prescriptions for hydroxychloroqiune, azithromycin, etc. Usually these people are over the age of 60 and they almost always have existing health issues. They don’t know what to do. Doctors won’t prescribe because it’s become so political”
https://twitter.com/zev_dr/status/1280162606381240322
Leo Goldstein
I recently saw my physician for my annual physical. There we were, him with a surgeon’s mask, and me with a Lone Ranger mask. Since he is in a high risk category (probably in his 50s) and sees lots of people up close, I was curious if he was doing anything to help keep him safe beyond masking. I asked him if he was perhaps using HCQ as a prophylactic. He laughed and said “No!” He said he didn’t believe in its usefulness. Now, clearly, that doesn’t provide a consensus. However, it does mean that there are competent MDs who don’t believe the claims made coming from the poor studies. They are not motivated by concerns of malpractice suits. That is what malpractice insurance is for. They, like all of us, are trying to sort out the often conflicting claims and make sense of it all based on their years of education and practice. They sometimes come to conclusions that you and others disagree with. That doesn’t mean that they are controlled by the pharmaceutical industry, or are suffering from TDS. They are just doctors trying to do what is best for their patients. However, to some, everything looks like a conspiracy.
Check this out. I found a study from a month ago, Henry Ford Health System.
“The study compared 81 patients admitted between March 10 and March 19 to 132 patients admitted later in the early stages of the pandemic, between March 20 and March 27. The later patients received the steroid protocol, which was implemented on March 20.
When comparing the two groups, those patients treated with a 3-day methylprednisolone protocol implemented on March 20 spent less time in the hospital (5 vs 8 days) and were less likely to be admitted to the ICU (27% vs 44%), being placed on a ventilator (22% vs 37%) or dying (14% vs 26%), according to study results.”
“The use of steroids is one of many examples of how Henry Ford Health System caregivers used a multi-faceted approach to treat patients during the COVID-19 pandemic. In addition to early-use steroids, Henry Ford medical teams have used a combination of Remdesivir, hydroxychloroquine, Interlukin 6, convalescent plasma, proning and other measures to provide treatment for COVID-19.”
WTF? This is the same hospital system, overlapping with the retrospective study, and it mentions a bunch of stuff not mentioned in this more recent “study”.
But the new one says it was consecutive patients admitted between March 10th and May 2.
So those same patients must have been in the newer group.
Did they exclude them, and not say so, or did some people also have plasma, remdesivir, proning, and “other measures”?
This is a frickin scandal.
This new paper from Ford Health is some sort of fraud.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/health/medical/henry-ford-detroit-finds-early-steroid-use-helps-stunt-covid/ar-BB15FaS5
That is impossible to reconcile with this from the new larger study of HCQ:
“Participants: Consecutive patients hospitalized with a COVID-related admission in the health
system from March 10,2020 to May 2,2020 were included. Only the first admission was included
for patients with multiple admissions. All patients evaluated were 18 years of age and older and
were treated as inpatients for at least 48 hours unless expired within 24 hours.”
The steroid (dexamethason) use only helps quell the immune response in late stage of the disease which leads to cytokine storms. HCQ and Zn should be given early to prevent that.
Steroid use early would make infections more prevalent, since they quell immune response.
You obviously think you know what steroid hormones do.
But you do not know what you do not know.
They do not “only” do what you say.
And doctors know when to give them.
A large study just showed a 33% improvement when steroids were used.
Doctors have to treat people as they are, in real time.
I think it is time to post some of your comments from a few months ago when you joked about how little you know about biochemistry, medicine, hospital care….
Wow Nick: nice try… So you are saying I got everything right… and then claimed you know more, without any specificity. My statement was clear and correct and you speak in non informative generalities. Keep up the good work.
You read what I wrote and decided I was saying you got everything right?
Yes, Nicholas: You added something on top of everything I wrote, which was right. Go back, slow down and realize this fact.
Well let me clarify.
I categorically do not agree with any word or idea you have written, ever, anywhere.
Period.
I am starting to see this as a fight between good and evil.
It is tragic that the Fake research is hiding the amazing benefit of very early treatment with HCQ + AZ.
This kind of madness will continue until the people find out. People are dying because of the complex corrupt political thing the Democrat party has become, and fake news.
Here is the peer reviewed study results (there will be more, there are still honest people), six Michigan hospitals more than 2500 patients amazing results.
A more than 50% reduction in the patient deaths and a 71% reduction in serious covid damage. Not a single case of the heart attacks that the Lancet study said 25% of the people ‘treated’ with HCQ had.
The FDA is political and 100% on the side of the industry until the people find out about this HCQ scandal.
Hydroxychloroquine provided a 66% hazard ratio reduction, and hydroxychloroquine + azithromycin 71% compared to neither treatment (p < 0.001).
https://www.ijidonline.com/article/S1201-9712(20)30534-8/fulltext
Treatment with Hydroxychloroquine, Azithromycin, and Combination in Patients Hospitalized with COVID-19
Results
Of 2,541 patients, with a median total hospitalization time of 6 days (IQR: 4-10 days), median age was 64 years (IQR:53-76 years), 51% male, 56% African American, with median time to follow-up of 28.5 days (IQR:3-53).
Science Research: On People’s Side
HCQ with azithromycin reduced deaths by 71% compared to no treatment. 2500 patients, no heart attacks. 6 Michigan hospitals.
Fake Research: Fake Research should result in criminal charges.
Lancet HCQ ‘study’ had 25% heart attacks and worse outcomes. Logical Reason: Lancet patients were near dead when they were given HCQ. HCQ treatment cannot reverse damage.
Fudging the results to hide a highly effective safe drug at a time of pandemic will result in political problems for the party on the side of evil.
Why is the FDA on the Side of Fake Research?
I agree… I have been the last to give credit to conspiracy theories.
However, in the last 4 to 5 years, I have seen several materialize.
The first was the Obama administration. The allegations are so extreme is seems non-credible so people get numbs to it. It happened! It’s causing the LEFT to implode and let’s hope they don’t take us with them.
On the HCQ and Covid 19 front: This misinformation is right in front of our faces, but again, the shills will fight to make things confusing while dribbling in bits of science here and there, and then telling non-believers of their disinformation as deniers of authority.
The only answer is that there is money and power behind all of this malfeasance.
Trump was right to dismantle the WHO… We have such a large swamp here in the USA, that we need to make sure to support the people who will vindicate what is truth and allow people to have access to it.
This is an attack of epic proportion.
That is in a sentence the whole problem with society these days.
People can’t have an argument anymore without imposing morality on it.
“If you don’t share my opinion you’re evil/paid/whatever”.
The whole concept of just disagreeing for scientific/plausibility/experience reasons seems to not exist anymore in the personal “reality” of some (too many) people.
“Troubling development” is the least I can say about it.
Ron: You are re framing the argument and then attacking a strawman.
This is a fight between good and evil. In short, one simple example. The lies from people who claim it’s dangerous to use HCQ for Covid 19 are intellectually dishonest. At best, it is a grotesque exaggeration to say it is dangerous to use it the way it saves lives.
This is an ideologically perverted argument you are taking up. And it’s perpetuated by the likes of the McGinley. All of the evidence points that it is not dangerous, and don’t give me that bunk about QT elongation caused by HCQ esp when those regimens were purposely done incorrectly. That is malpractice in most cases.
So why would they lie? Maybe, because they consider it a fight to ensure more expensive drugs get used. Maybe it will make Trump look bad instead of him taking credit for knowing it seemed to work back then. Well, if you still think there is no evidence that HCQ and Zn have been shown to be the best low risk, low cost drug and supplement cocktail thus far, you need to state why without the nonsense BS.
Be specific, and cut the nonsense.
You are a sick man Mario.
I am starting to believe the part about good vs evil.
When someone tells us who they are, we should listen.
I know why you have somehow become obsessed with putting me in the middle of the opposition you face in your delusional “war”.
It is because I make it impossible for you to keep believing what you have decided must be the case.
I am over the target, and getting all the flak.
Just in case you have an occasional moment of clarity, I will just remind you…you are making all of this up.
You have imagined yourself some sort of hero, and so anyone who disagrees with you about anything, must be the antithesis of everything you have ever believed or known.
You actually imagine I am here on an agenda of destruction!
Disagreeing with you, or Jim, or Eliza…is tantamount to a being on a mission of mass murder!
That is what you are accusing here.
Can it penetrate into your mind how crazy that is?
I never called you evil and even went out of my way to say that. I am talking about the misinformation out there that prevents people from safe drugs that is shown to save lives.
Nick, once you became a victim you started to think even more things that are simply not true. Believe me, YOU are not in my head.
Mario said,
“This is a fight between good and evil. In short, one simple example. The lies from people who claim it’s dangerous to use HCQ for Covid 19 are intellectually dishonest. At best, it is a grotesque exaggeration to say it is dangerous to use it the way it saves lives.
This is an ideologically perverted argument you are taking up. And it’s perpetuated by the likes of the McGinley.”
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2020/07/05/hypothesis-restrictions-on-hydroxychloroquine-contribute-to-the-covid-19-cases-surge/#comment-3030134
Ron,
Remember when we saw this from the “mean and stupid” faction of the warmistas?
This Mario Lento lunatic is calling people who disagree with him “deniers”.
Here we have people on WUWT declaring to cheers that anyone who is not helping them hand out malaria drugs needs to be thrown in jail!
So far off the deep end of rationality and ability to have a conversation, that anyone who does not think the gubmint needs to hand out pills to everyone in the country like they believe should happen, must be left wing, must be evil, must be stupid, does not believe in “the science”…
The sad thing is, they are oblivious to the fact they have now adopted the mentality of warmistas, and their entire playbook, on steroids.
But it took warmistas years and years to reach that level of insanity, and it was imposed on them by years and years of media harangues and one sided sermonizing, paired up with end of the world doomsday catastrophism.
These guys have done it to themselves! And in only a few months!
Nicholas: You just wrote: “This Mario Lento lunatic is calling people who disagree with him “deniers”.”
Where have I done that? I am sure you’re mistaken.
And you say I have a bad memory?
Do I have to post the quote and the link, or will you just admit it?
Mods: I promised I would stop. And I have stopped responding to this poster. I am being lied about again. There is no quote from me, but about me, and it’s being claimed I said something I did not.
I am being defamed here, and I request that it be stopped.
You spent a day or two insulting me Mario.
You went on and on when he said stop.
I did not.
I posted what you asked for.
It was snipped.
Yours were not.
Now you insist I shut up?
Hey this Interesting.
We know that regardless of age or sex that Vitamin D normal people 25(OH)D serum level more than 30ng/ml, are 19 times less likely to die than Vitamin D deficient people, 25(OH)D serum level of less than 20ng/ml
So that explains why the Covid death rate in Florida (the sunshine state, blacks and whites go to the beach and hang out outside in Florida) is roughly a factor of 10 less than the covid death rate in New York.
Covid Death Rate Breitbart
https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2020/07/06/south-florida-underreported-coronavirus-cases-drive-down-death-rate-cdc-data-suggests/
Breitbart News relied on COVID-19 (coronavirus disease) confirmed cases and death figures for those countries provided by the Johns Hopkins University tracker.
Using the new CDC and Johns Hopkins data, Breitbart News calculated that South Florida’s death rate was no more than 0.6 as of May 1, down over 80 percent from an estimated 3.6 before the antibodies study.
That mortality rate is between three and eight times lower than the earlier estimates — of two to four percent — that prompted the lockdowns
The 0.6 IFR takes into account the three-week lag, a conservative estimate, between the identification of a COVID-19 (coronavirus disease) infection and when the infected dies.
When taking the data at face value, without accounting for the time it takes for an individual to progress from being diagnosed to dying, Breitbart News determined the death rate was even lower — 0.19 percent.
In comparison, the flu’s death rate in the United State is 0.1 percent on average.
Not all fatality rate estimates account for the estimated time between infection and death.
The 0.19 percent mortality rate (without accounting for the lag between infection and death), as of April 10, is down about 90 percent from about two percent before the CDC study.
Based on Worldometer numbers, there have been 3778 deaths out of 206447 cases. That is a naive estimate of 1.83%. It’s low, because some of those 206447 will die in the future.
There is some indication that recent cases have a higher survival rate. This is sometimes attributed to better treatment, or to the possibility that the surge following reopening afflicts a greater proportion of young people. If the latter, it may be temporary, as the new cases then infect others in a broader demographic range.
Yes Nick.. but you darn well know that “206447” is not the actual number of people who have gotten the infection, right?
I know you are careful and very smart. So why did you just post this? Other inquiring minds wish to know! (my last sentence was trite, I admit that 🙂
But the post compares this “adjusted” IFR with the case fatality rate in New York. Hence the factor of 10.
The relative ratio of the number of deaths to the reported cases shows what is claimed.
But the ‘extrapolated’ probable mortality rate considers uncounted cases. Of course it’s a guess, but it’s reasonably to know there are at least an order of magnitude more infections than are tested for.
So deaths are mostly counted, whereas symptomless and and mild enough infections are not tested are therefore uncounted.
That’s brilliant.
You have been telling people don’t be vit D deficient (among other things).
I have been angrily shouted down by some Left leaning believers for telling the truth about how to not be a victim of this insanity. Including being called a racists because I don’t admit Covid a racist disease. They should know darn well the Vit D issues surrounding wrong use of sunscreen, vilification of the sun, and how skin color affects how much exposure is optimal for health.
Imagine an informed society not needing to buy expensive drugs when a little common sense knowledge could save so much cost and so many lives.
PS _ I consider you to be highly knowledgeable on this subject…
They aren’t “stupid” in Brazil like we (well, the MSM and certain pols) and easily ‘cowed’ into compliance on Covid-19 treating protocols as here in the western, English-speaking world.
Here is an interview with Dr Christiana Altino de Almeida, from Recife, Brazil, dated June 27 2020.
http://covexit.com/interview-with-dr-altino-de-almeida-from-recife-brazil/
The interview is in 3 parts on Youtube, and linked-to in the above article AND below.
While the interview focuses on Brazil, Dr Altino de Almeida voices her opinions about what is going on internationally, especially in countries such as Canada and the UK, where the pandemic is still active and where those who contract COVID-19 are not treated early for the disease, in large part because of governmental policies prohibiting medical doctors from doing so.
In this first part of the interview, Dr Altino de Almeida talks about her own experience, how she came to treat COVID-19 patients, how early treatment is so important, and how the medical profession in Brazil came to adopt a treatment protocol relying on the experience of numerous medical doctors treating the disease – a protocol now official endorsed by the federal ministry of health.
Part 1 of 3, HCQ and Zinc mentioned at 5:51 onward: https://youtu.be/u22mPRbrgtg?t=352
Part 2 of 3, Personal testimony of Dr Altino de Almeida when she had Covid-19
Use of HCQ AZT and Zinc at 8:54 https://youtu.be/Qo7hsFcIkbQ?t=534
Part 3 of 3 https://youtu.be/u9Hjm6F5spY
Third part of our interview with the esteemed Dr Altino de Almeida, we talk, broadly speaking, about public health policies. This includes many interlinked aspects, such as:
Response at federal and state Levels
o The medical expert board advising the federal minister of health
o The bottom-up information flow relying on medical doctors throughout the country
o The amazing yet tragic episode in Belem, where many were saved, but also where many medical doctors lost their lives
o The protection & prophylaxis for medical professionals, including with the use of ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine
o The constant progress towards convincing medical doctors and local authorities to adopt the new early treatment approach
o The vaccination trials in Brazil and how such vaccination may not be a solution for the country
o A special message to the WHO, to stop claiming there is no treatment and to let the medical doctors of the world to treat their patients
This is claptrap. Australia closed borders early, supervised quarantine of returning travellers and quarantined non-essential workers. All that was very effective in preventing the spread.
Right now the genie is out in Victoria with parts of Melbourne back to home quarantine and 9 public housing high-rise in complete lockdown under police guard; essentially home prison with no resident permitted in or out.
The genie got out primarily through partying at the end of Ramadan. So the infection is rife amongst a particular religious group.
Treatment protocols appear to be improving but many US hospitals are again into making triage decisions that will limit the level of care. HCQ has not been part of the treatment protocol in Australia and it is not something used widely in Australia.
The rapid increases in hospitalisations in the USA are across the sunny states where people have been mingling in good sunshine and warm weather.
US has just started its battle with CV19. It appears a magic cure is still a way off. Death rate will increase quite dramatically mid July, following the increase in infection rates and now hospitalisations.
Right now there is only one certainty – avoid contracting CV19 and encourage everyone you know to do likewise.
Read Nick Cordero’s 95 day battle if you have any doubts about the danger of contracting CV19:
https://www.scmp.com/news/world/europe/article/3091949/coronavirus-broadway-actor-nick-cordero-who-had-leg-amputated
So Nick is now just a statistic but consider the trauma of his last days. This infection does not just kill the old and infirm.
Stokes, McGinley, Mosh all these people believe in lockdowns and AGW and dont like Hydroxy havent you noticed Mr Watts? They want the coronavirus panic to continue forever! You are being trolled to death these people are trying to slowly trying to destroy your site without your noticing it! wake up/ Maybe its time to ban them let them troll elsewhere their purpose is to destroy this site with endless long boring rebuttals so people just get tired reading your posts and dont come back. My 2 cents worth cheers.
McGinley certainly dilutes the intellect of this site. He’s wordy without substance, makes stuff up, and occasionally gets something right by accident. He’s a troll set out to cause harm, and he knows it.
I sincerely hope you idiots do not succeed in turning this site into your private echo chamber for jackass du jour internet buffoonery.
But I have to admit you are making a full court press effort in that direction.
You two have managed to make the worst warmistas to ever show up here look like good natured brainiacs.
Seriously…you nitwits somehow have made niceguy seem only mildy annoying.
“missed diagnostic procedures for various cancers, eg mammography, colonoscopies”
Zero evidence these actually do any good, so…
There may soon be another data point here:
“CNN reported that Mr. Bolsonaro, 65, had a fever above 100 degrees and had begun taking hydroxychloroquine, an anti-malaria pill he has promoted as effective to treat the virus. The report attributed that information to the president himself.”
I stopped at CNN…
OK, here’s Fox
I also stopped again. Another data point 😉
And this story from Fox News has no mention of HCQ and when you say president, did you think which president they were talking about since Bolsanaro is also president? You just helped us prove how different stories are from CNN. What you posted earlier is nothing like below.
Here’s the entire article from Fox from your link:
Brazil’s Bolsonaro undergoes lung test after reported coronavirus symptoms
Edmund DeMarcheBy Edmund DeMarche | Fox News
Jair Bolsonaro, the Brazilian president who has been widely criticized over his handling of the coronavirus outbreak in his country said his lungs were clean after reports that he showed symptoms of COVID-19, Reuters reported.
“I came from the hospital,” he told Foco do Brazil, which was described by Reuters as a pro-government Youtube channel. “I came from the hospital. I underwent a lung scan. The lung’s clean.”
He did not confirm reports that he was suffering from a fever.
Brazil’s Supreme Court published documents in May showing that Bolsonaro tested negative three times in March after meeting with President Trump in Florida. He hasn’t said whether he took any additional tests for the disease since.
More than 65,000 people have died from COVID-19 in Brazil.
OK, here is another Murdoch report, quoting the man himself speaking on TV:
“The test “has come out and it’s positive,” Bolsonaro said in a television interview from his residence in capital Brasilia, adding that he was taking hydroxychloroquine and azithromycin to treat the illness.”
Hi Nick: I may have misunderstood your first post. It sounded to me like you were alluding to Trump as the cause of the Brazil’s president self dosing. All three references add up to make it less and less clear what the point is.
There are conflicting reports, Bolsonaro was not positive for Covid 19, Bolsonaro was positive for Covid 19, Bolsonaro took HCQ. Where he got the information to take HCQ is not clear… There is no information that anyone can take to the bank.
The point is, the media decides what to say, and how to say it and there can be no clear conclusions to be drawn.
Can you distill the information into a valid clear story of what transpired wrt to Bolsonaro, and does that distillation come down to whom does one choose to believe? I cannot.
I can remember so many stories that came out of CNN that later were debunked. There’s so many that on their face seem like good reporting. So just wait 24 hours, and you will see they are dishonest brokers of anything political.
The report issued by Henry Ford Health Services (HFH) this past week is a large study which gathered data from a huge number of patients over nearly two months.
In that report, the describe the patients as every person who showed up with COVID from March 10th to May 2nd. Please correct me if I got the exact dates.
Two months.
It seemed to be stated that it was every one of the people they treated in that time.
But in their data from this report, they do not make any mention of using remdesivir on a single patient.
They do not mention using plasma on a single patient.
Those are not in their data sheets.
They make one mention of remdesivir, but do not say anything about why no patients are listed as getting it.
There is also the issue of ECMO vs ventilation, and any other medications and treatments, like positioning patients so they could breathe more easily.
Many of these were ideas that were come upon and passed around to various hospitals at a certain point in time during that interval.
In other words, they were things that had not been done, but at some point were done.
So over time the protocols changed.
They cut off the study at the time that remdesivir became the standard of care, at the beginning of May.
But many people were getting it before that.
So the question is, why does the new paper say nothing about any other drugs or treatment the patients they are talking about did or did not get?
They were clearly using other things.
They used remdesivir.
They used plasma.
They used positioning.
These were not mentioned or accounted for.
But they were all things that were likely done starting at some point in time, or where done to some patients but not others all along.
The question I am asking is, how could they not include other treatments and medications those people got, but are not listed in the tables or included in their calculations?
They left out critical information that had a decisive effect on the outcome of many patients.
Left it 100% unsaid wheat else some people got, and who it was, and when.
They also did not include info on WHEN in the two month interval the four groups of patients were treated.
It was not random in time, it was sequential.
Is that patient list really every patient during that interval?
If not, they cherry picked.
(They subtracted some people while saying it is a sequential compilation of everyone.)
If so, they left out info on other things that were given to those people, or not given.
I will say it plainly.
They seem to have committed fraud.
See here:
“In addition to early-use steroids, Henry Ford medical teams have used a combination of Remdesivir, hydroxychloroquine, Interlukin 6, convalescent plasma, proning and other measures to provide treatment for COVID-19.”
Remdesivir, proning, early vs late steroid use, convalescent plasma, and “other measures”.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/health/medical/henry-ford-detroit-finds-early-steroid-use-helps-stunt-covid/ar-BB15FaS5
Best “alternative” websites I’ve found dealing with scientific and medical studies concerning covid-19
peakprosperity.com (Chris Martenson’s videos and articles)
https://swprs.org/a-swiss-doctor-on-covid-19/
http://medicineuncensored.com/