The Lancet Doubles Down on anti-HCQ Fraud

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2020-08-25 Mehra et al. was worse than fraud.

On August 22, The Lancet published an editorial Trump versus Biden: a fight for the health of a nation, attacking Trump administration and repeating talking points of the Democrat-Socialist party. For example: “The US must move away from a system in which health care is politicised, contentious, and tied to employment, income, and immigration status. In addition, President Trump’s isolationist and anti-scientific adminstration [sic!] has de-prioritised health and health care.” The Lancet is a British journal. This act is an open and in-your-face interference in the American elections.

The British government might re-consider any support it provides to The Lancet. Scientists, regulatory bodies, and the public in both countries should take notice that The Lancet became a political journal, publishing scientific articles matching its politics, and discount them.

On August 21, The Lancet Rheumatology published another anti-HCQ paper, with a surprisingly similar title to the fraudulent  Mehra et al., which was published on May 22 and retracted on June 4.  This new paper is titled: Risk of hydroxychloroquine alone and in combination with azithromycin in the treatment of rheumatoid arthritis: a multinational, retrospective study. While it  might not be be an outright fraud, it is incorrect and produced by dubious methods. Continue reading The Lancet Doubles Down on anti-HCQ Fraud →

A Study of Actual HCQ Usage is Published in WUWT

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Hydroxychloroquine in COVID-19 Treatment, Actual Usage in the USA is published in WUWT. The Supplementary Materials:

Summary.xlsx

Hydroxychloroquine-Actual-Use-USA-Attachment.zip

Based on its results, roughly about 500 thousands Americans were prescribed Hydroxychloroquine for COVID-19 treatment from January through the end of July.

If Hydroxychloroquine were 1/100th as dangerous as fake scientists claim, the media would be choke full of stories about naive citizens, that died from the “Trump touted drug”. Instead, the media regurgitates the story from March 23, when a man died from ingesting fish tank cleaner with chloroquine phosphate. The police suspected that was a murder, but decided to call it an incident.

Same day correction: the rough estimate is changed to ~500,000.

2020-08-25: The Supplementary Materials are uploaded

IDSA against HCQ and Plasma

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Two days ago, the Infectious Disease Society (IDSA) published its recommendations against the use of Hydroxychloroquine and convalescent plasma for the treatment of COVID-19. Apparently, they knew that Trump would announce the FDA authorization of plasma therapy for COVID-19, and they wanted to strike  preemptively. At the same time, they recommended the use of the ineffective and unsafe drug, Remdesivir. Continue reading IDSA against HCQ and Plasma →

Convalescent Plasma is OK, but HCQ is Better

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Convalescent plasma has been widely and successfully used as a COVID-19 treatment. For example, a survey Sermo W3, April 15, shows that 46% of the doctors that had used convalescent plasma or had seen it used, said it is very or extremely effective against COVID-19.

Plasma has been positively mentioned in Hydroxychloroquine-based COVID-19 Treatment, A Systematic Review of Clinical Evidence and Expert Opinion from Physicians’ Surveys.

Continue reading Convalescent Plasma is OK, but HCQ is Better →

Oseltamivir and QT Interval

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The Brazilian trial, Borba et al. [3], in which critically ill patients were given toxic doses of chloroquine (not hydroxychloroquine), also included oseltamivir. Oseltamivir (Tamiflu®) is known to prolong QT interval [1]. It is also known to cause Bradycardia, both confirmed by animal experiments [2] (citing [1] for the results in humans). The NIH COVID-19 Treatment Guidelines described the Brazilian HCQ trial in detail, but failed to mention that oseltamivir is known to prolong QT interval on its own. The NIH Guidelines also failed to mention that the study authors stressed that the findings cannot be extrapolated to non-severe cases (emphasis is mine): Continue reading Oseltamivir and QT Interval →