I thought hydroxychloroquine was disproven as total junk science. I recall seeing on the news during the pandemic that it was ineffective. What has changed?
...This result is remarkable because treatment with hydroxychloroquine was abandoned following the results of the SOLIDARITY and RECOVERY trial, which did not find a clinical benefit [20,21].
> despite the controversy surrounding its use, treatment with hydroxychloroquine and azithromycin remains a viable option
Also keep in mind there were only 400 people in the treatment group, and the study concedes:
> our study reports on outcomes from the first half of 2020, before vaccination became available and before the emergence of new COVID-19 variants. Since that time several drugs, like remdesivir, molnupiravir and nirmatrelvir/ritonavir were approved for the treatment of Covid-19
> I thought hydroxychloroquine was disproven as total junk science. I recall seeing on the news during the pandemic that it was ineffective. What has changed?
Once again: what has changed is the lies of mainstream media and politicians during the covid outbreaks being exposed.
Here's a study on 30 000+ patients made by doctors, not politicians. The results are without any appeal: HCQ works and it works wonder (which many knew and many knew that for whatever reason there was a cabal trying to silence doctors saying HCQ was working):
Early on in the pandemic a couple of doctors around the world reported that a combination of drugs, including hydroxychloroquine and azithromycin plus zinc was successful in treating Covid-19. As long as it wasn't too late, i.e., the patient wasn't already on a ventilator. Those 2 drugs are inexpensive and plentiful, so they could've stopped the pandemic early on, before the lockdowns and vaccine mandates. I leave it to you, to speculate why this knowledge was suppressed.
Yes, I only recall a couple of doctors - there may have been more. The actual question to ask though, is how many patients?
Another question to ask is who financed the "SOLIDARITY and RECOVERY" trial that you seem to place so much faith in. And was it scientifically valid?
Too much "science" these days is corrupted by economic, political and ideological incentives, so I am suspicious of all of it.
This leads me to trust anecdotal evidence more than I should, but what else is there? Even though anecdotal evidence is a relatively weak form of evidence, it is still evidence and it still counts for something.
The only alternative is to do a deep dive into every allegedly scientific study out there, that one is interested in, and evaluate it.
> The only alternative is to do a deep dive into every allegedly scientific study out there
Agreed, reading takes effort, bummer. Luckily the authors have done the work for you, and linked to the two studies. When you're finished reading them, please let me know what faults you found in their research:
The authors have done the work for me? Hmmm. I don't think that's how it works. In order for me to evaluate any particular paper, I have to read it myself and evaluate it myself. I have to identify implicit premises, I have to ask, did they follow the scientific method? Does their data make sense? Are they missing alternative explanations? Does their conclusion match their initial hypothesis and/or their data? And many other questions. No one can do that for me. And as I said in another comment, there are too many corrupt incentives to produce predetermined outcomes.
Thanks for providing the links, I expect that they will be enlightening, in one way or another.
Please let me know how you determine the validity of scientific paper.
The best way to determine the validity of a paper is to give it to a team of grad students in a journal club.
They will immediately find large numbers of flaws (in any paper), some of which may invalidate the conclusion.
Papers which survive multiple rounds of attempts to invalidate the conclusion, are less likely to be incorrect.
You can't just naively go in and ask "did they follow the scientific method" or "does the data make sense", etc, unless you understand the field in enough detail to not repeat the copious mistakes of past generations.
For example, this study is retrospective, while the RECOVERY study was designed to be prospective (if I read their study design correctly; I'm not an epidemiologist, my phd is in biophysics). In general, retrospective studies produce less convincing evidence and so if yuou asked me to compare the results of the two studies, I would place more weight on RECOVERY. IIUC it also has a larger sample size. But all these things pale in comparison to complex, detailed analysis of the study plans to identify any major mistakes.
Hard work, right? How did you determine the validity of the "couple of [unnamed] doctors" that you trust over published research?
> "science" these days is corrupted by [...] I am suspicious of all of it
Including the science done by the "couple of doctors" you mentioned? You believe "they could've stopped the pandemic early on" and you're suspicious of them?
Oh, please. Everyone and their dog heard about hydroxychloroquine in the first 3 weeks of the pandemic. People also tried using it without approval from a doctor, with very little succes, much like the controlled trial that showed it was not effective. This knowledge was "suppressed" because people tend to try not to lie to each other.
it's no great conspiracy, it's the normal working of the bureaucratic/legal structure, as any organizational sociologist will gladly tell you:
An emergency approval of the vaccine was only legal if there are no other working remedies. So, it was legally necessary to certify that there were no other working remedies; so this is where the bureacratic attempts were directed,
This directs the legal and business bureaucracy to seek no official confirmation of such an alternative, which means you don't, of course, invest officially in tests that could come to a different conclusion; you invest in those that do (medical tests are famously influencable, but that is for another thread). At the same time, the other remedies remain "unproven" except by evidence presented by doctors who use it, who can be bureaucratically dismissed as "but this is not a proven remedy, and we can't recommend it" - formalspeak, we all know it.
Again, not a conspiracy theory by any means, just the normal, sociological workings of organizations we are all familiar with on smaller scales. (Of course, it does require us to dispense with the childish notion that organizations work for nothing but our benefit, with integrity and honesty; of course they don't, none do, but that also doesn't mean they work AGAINST out benefit. At the time, it was understandable to think "we have to help the vaccine get approved, and diversions would cost lives".)
The fun part about sociology is that we all have implicit knowledge that this is how organizational bureaucracies work. For some reason, we're also castigated when we say this out loud.
What is the point exactly of requiring no other available options in order for emergency approval if you just sandbag the available options in order to gain emergency approval? Shouldn't we look closer at where that requirement comes from?
20 comments
[ 2.9 ms ] story [ 74.4 ms ] thread> despite the controversy surrounding its use, treatment with hydroxychloroquine and azithromycin remains a viable option
Also keep in mind there were only 400 people in the treatment group, and the study concedes:
> our study reports on outcomes from the first half of 2020, before vaccination became available and before the emergence of new COVID-19 variants. Since that time several drugs, like remdesivir, molnupiravir and nirmatrelvir/ritonavir were approved for the treatment of Covid-19
Once again: what has changed is the lies of mainstream media and politicians during the covid outbreaks being exposed.
Here's a study on 30 000+ patients made by doctors, not politicians. The results are without any appeal: HCQ works and it works wonder (which many knew and many knew that for whatever reason there was a cabal trying to silence doctors saying HCQ was working):
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37861932
> treatment with hydroxychloroquine was abandoned following the results of the SOLIDARITY and RECOVERY trial, which did not find a clinical benefit
"Those 2 drugs are inexpensive and plentiful"
Also mentioned in the paper
> there is a continued need for widely available, effective and affordable treatment [instead of nirmatrelvir/ritonavir]
https://theintercept.com/2021/09/28/covid-telehealth-hydroxy...
Agreed, reading takes effort, bummer. Luckily the authors have done the work for you, and linked to the two studies. When you're finished reading them, please let me know what faults you found in their research:
1. https://scholar.google.com/scholar_lookup?title=Effect%20of%...
2. https://scholar.google.com/scholar_lookup?title=Repurposed%2...
They will immediately find large numbers of flaws (in any paper), some of which may invalidate the conclusion.
Papers which survive multiple rounds of attempts to invalidate the conclusion, are less likely to be incorrect.
You can't just naively go in and ask "did they follow the scientific method" or "does the data make sense", etc, unless you understand the field in enough detail to not repeat the copious mistakes of past generations.
For example, this study is retrospective, while the RECOVERY study was designed to be prospective (if I read their study design correctly; I'm not an epidemiologist, my phd is in biophysics). In general, retrospective studies produce less convincing evidence and so if yuou asked me to compare the results of the two studies, I would place more weight on RECOVERY. IIUC it also has a larger sample size. But all these things pale in comparison to complex, detailed analysis of the study plans to identify any major mistakes.
Hard work, right? How did you determine the validity of the "couple of [unnamed] doctors" that you trust over published research?
> "science" these days is corrupted by [...] I am suspicious of all of it
Including the science done by the "couple of doctors" you mentioned? You believe "they could've stopped the pandemic early on" and you're suspicious of them?
Don't be snarky. Converse curiously; don't cross-examine. Edit out swipes.
Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive.
Please don't post shallow dismissals, especially of other people's work. A good critical comment teaches us something.
Here's a study on 30 000+ patients made over the years (published in 2023). HCQ works and is particularly effective:
https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.04.03.23287649v...
"Early Treatment with Hydroxychloroquine and Azithromycin: A ‘Real-Life’ Monocentric Retrospective Cohort Study of 30,423 COVID-19 Patients"
FWIW HCQ+Azithromycin is now a recommended treatment for suspected Covid patients.
An emergency approval of the vaccine was only legal if there are no other working remedies. So, it was legally necessary to certify that there were no other working remedies; so this is where the bureacratic attempts were directed,
This directs the legal and business bureaucracy to seek no official confirmation of such an alternative, which means you don't, of course, invest officially in tests that could come to a different conclusion; you invest in those that do (medical tests are famously influencable, but that is for another thread). At the same time, the other remedies remain "unproven" except by evidence presented by doctors who use it, who can be bureaucratically dismissed as "but this is not a proven remedy, and we can't recommend it" - formalspeak, we all know it.
Again, not a conspiracy theory by any means, just the normal, sociological workings of organizations we are all familiar with on smaller scales. (Of course, it does require us to dispense with the childish notion that organizations work for nothing but our benefit, with integrity and honesty; of course they don't, none do, but that also doesn't mean they work AGAINST out benefit. At the time, it was understandable to think "we have to help the vaccine get approved, and diversions would cost lives".)
The fun part about sociology is that we all have implicit knowledge that this is how organizational bureaucracies work. For some reason, we're also castigated when we say this out loud.