Interesting that you bring up this case instead of the 350 successful cases (which I just showed you) where the actual drug was used.
Interesting you make this grandiose claim unmoored from truth. Please return to the post I methodically responded to and actually read for yourself the Bulgarian news site's brief article sparse on crucial details about the under-powered, non-peer reviewed, open label non-randomized clinical trial performed by French scientists. You're apparently so impressed by the headline you could not restrain yourself from posting the exact same link to me again in this post I'm quoting, but from the content of your claims I have to question whether you've invested effort to read for yourself the whole of the brief article. It's obvious you haven't read the study itself or the analysis by scientists detailing the severe methodological errors of it. I did. I also read the
study in the Journal of Zhejiang University that found that Hydroxychloroquine, the antimalarial drug dubbed a "gift from God" by Trump for its potential ability,
was found to be no more effective than standard treatment.
There are larger clinical trials to test its efficacy, but there's a reason physicians and scientists have been appalled and distressed about Trump's premature proclamations. What is the absolute most important commodity in a public health crisis is honesty. You want to under-promise and over-deliver, but Trump has done the opposite. Pumping out hope that lacks a solid foundation of fact is cruel and counterproductive. It's also sowed confusion, chaos and dire predicaments unnecessarily.
Does one person mistakenly using a fish tank cleaning chemical mean that we should ignore the hundreds of people whose lives have been saved by taking the actual drug?
The ramifications of the vastly embellished claims about Hydroxychloroquine for COVID-19 extend beyond the three (that I know of at the time I'm writing this post) who've died as a direct result of them, to the many more with chronic medical conditions who have an actual need for these medications but yet due to the frenzied rush of anyone with prescribing rights - regardless of knowledge or expertise specific to this medication or infectious disease - overprescribing it and swiftly causing a severe shortage. Dentists have been prescribing it. People are also buying it from online pharmacies located in other countries, which again not only deprives those who legitimately need it for autoimmune conditions and malaria - a leading killer in many parts of the world - but is perilous due to the lack of oversight by a physician about the appropriateness and the dosage. India had to ban the export, which worsens the terror of those who genuinely need the medication and cannot obtain it anywhere. People I personally know and love are brutally impacted, and it's for naught. You cannot imagine the terror and distress of having lost two children to lupus and then finding out that the medicine your surviving child with lupus needs is unavailable despite vigorous and widespread search, but I can because that's the precise predicament a friend at our church is in. It's agony on an indescribable magnitude.
The American Society of Health-System Pharmacists reported a shortage of HCQ in a surreally fast amount of time due to the staggering number of people seeking it out of the premature dab of hope that it could be a treatment for COVID-19. Within days state pharmacy boards in Idaho, Ohio, Nevada, Texas, Kentucky, NC, and Oklahoma had restricted prescriptions. At least one board also restricted azithromycin.
In addition to the life-threatening shortage of the drug inflicting harm upon people vulnerable due to their health conditions, there's severe risks in taking chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine without careful consideration of personal history and understanding of dosage that you seem naively flippant about. Poison Control centers have warned people these drugs can cause significant illness with permanent damage or death if not taken in the correct dose or manner. Even if taken correctly, they can cause toxicity when administered together with other drugs.
All you're doing here is pulling the dark clouds of fear over any silver lining that others are finding.
No, what I'm doing is pulling back the dark clouds of disinformation and misinformation pollution to
look at what actual physicians knowledgeable about the facts have stated. They responded instantly and publicly, with justifiable alarm, explaining that Trump's recommendation involved, to quote an emergency room physician: “a dangerous combination of drugs with tons of side effects,” and that “together they can make your heart go into abnormal rhythms and even kill you.”
Physicians, including the medical experts for Donald Trump have had to walk the tightrope of diplomatically refuting his reckless bravado about the antimalarial drugs in a manner delicate of his ego, while presenting the facts in order to honor their oath of "first, do no harm."
Trump says his belief in one potential coronavirus drug is ‘just a feeling’
Trump admitted that his enthusiasm for an antimalarial drug unproven as a coronavirus treatment was based largely on gut instinct, after an open disagreement with the nation’s top infectious disease expert at a White House press briefing. When reporters asked Tony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, whether the drug hydroxychloroquine was effective at preventing coronavirus, he said simply: “The answer is no.”
This had been reiterated by many other experts.
I've been noticing the exact same thing happening in the news coverage. Last night on NBC News, I was hoping they were going to report on the hundreds of successful treatments and how this drug is being tried out more widely, and how Israel is donating 10 million pills of it to the United States. Israeli company to donate 10 million tablets of potential coronavirus remedy to the U.S. Instead, the only thing they reported about the drug was that one person used a fish tank cleaning chemical instead, and it killed him, and then they attempted to tie his death to Donald Trump, as usual.
I haven't had the time to watch mainstream news so thank you for letting me know NBC was far more responsible than Fox News and showed respectful concern for their viewers by explaining the tragedy caused by confusion not uncommon in laypeople.
The avalanche of hype was caused by dishonesty featured on Fox News. They presented a charlatan who claimed to be an advisor to Stanford Medical School to opine about the tiny French study and a Google Documents paper that has now been removed. I knew within seconds he was a fraud for looking up his name in our directory and finding no records of his affiliation with us. Stanford repudiated him, disgusted by his wanting to fraudulently exploit the university's reputation, and demanding that he stop. The damage had been done. It got retweeted by Charlie Kirk and other right-wingers without a whit of care about responsibility and gained momentum on sites like what you've posted.
Quit buying into the media's negativity, and don't buy into the fear mongering that's going on. It's amazing that anything that could give us hope in a time like this is seen as a negative, and that we should not even have hope. Perhaps you should take a look at their motives and ask yourself why:
https://nypost.com/2020/03/24/nevada-governor-bans-malaria-drugs-for-coronavirus-patients/
Quit giving unsolicited and incorrect advice. I'm incredulous that you want to wag your finger about not buying into what the media peddles, then cite......... the freaking NY Post. I mean. I just cannot even at that one. I'm working on a degree with a concentration in Global Health; several of my professors are world renowned experts in public health. It's from them, from actual doctors and epidemiologists rather than silly right-wing blog sites and frivolous sources where I'm gaining most of my education. My professors have been posting about this extensively and I certainly trust them much more than Trump, Fox News, Charlie Kirk, or you to synthesize information and present it accurately. Since they're mainly on our private forum I am posting more from publicly accessible sites, but ones such as Science Magazine and Stat.
This is insane!’ Many scientists lament Trump’s embrace of risky malaria drugs for coronavirus
On Sunday, Science magazine asked Fauci how he can tolerate statements that “aren’t true and aren’t factual”; Fauci replied, “I can’t jump in front of the microphone and push him down.” Fauci carefully explained that any clinical successes related to the cocktail that Trump was praising were anecdotal. He said, “My job is to ultimately prove without a doubt that a drug is not only safe but that it works.”
Yes, Nevada's governor is a democrat.
Banning a desperately needed drug? Let me guess...it's to keep us safe while we live in fear.
Thank God for the wisdom of the governor who is listening to what actual medical doctors and public health experts have advised rather than Fox News, tabloids, and Twitter. It is because it's a desperately needed drug and those with a conscience care about keeping others safe that stockpiling has been banned. I'm grateful to Gov. Sisolak for the prudence demonstrated in the order, and the resolve to stand by it despite the onslaught of disinformation and vitriol waged by those wishing to foolishly politicize the decision without regard to the facts presented by those capable of giving them.
The FDA, CDC, and Poison Control Centers are apolitical and are not the mainstream media, but have utilized the MSM to disseminate the plea to the public to not seek out chloroquine, and the related compound hydroxychloroquine. Dr. Daniel Brooks, the medical director of the Banner Poison and Drug Information Center, said "The last thing that we want right now is to inundate our emergency departments with patients who believe they found a vague and risky solution that could potentially jeopardize their health."
As a counter to this type of fear mongering and anti-Trump bias, I'll show you successes: French Scientists Report Successful Results from a COVID-19 Drug Combination - Novinite.com - Sofia News Agency
Now, would you rather hear about those successes, or would you rather read just another fear-filled article that's clearly meant to be an anti-Trump piece?
I have to wonder if you pay any attention at all to what you post. Seriously. As I explained above, this is the same tiny French study that you linked (via a flimsy article on a Bulgarian news site) in your previous post. Actual experts from around the world with no affiliation to US politics are indeed filled with fear, due to Trump's irresponsible embellishments. Darren Dahly, a co-author of one of several critiques of that study and a principal statistician at the University College Cork School of Public Health (in Ireland), said it would be “egregious” to recommend treatments for millions of people based on such an extremely small trial. An Australian National University expert on drug resistance, was more blunt, stating in response to Trump's pronouncements, “this is insane!" and noting what he sees as lapses in the 6-day trial, including inconsistent testing of virus levels in the patients.
This study referenced by Trump, and other studies done so far of potential treatments for Covid-19, are small and hastily designed, even by the standards of Phase 1 trials (small studies used to get an early read on efficacy and rule out obvious safety issues that are then refined in larger “Phase 2” studies and then finally in the large “Phase 3” studies used by the FDA to decide whether to approve a drug.) For context, an analysis by the Biotechnology Industry Organization of years worth of studies says only 27.% of infectious-disease drugs that enter Phase 2 studies end up reaching the market. Three-quarters of the time, medicines against infectious disease that looked promising in small studies either were ineffective or had side effects that made them unusable. Even for medicines that reached Phase 3 trials, just 63% succeeded.
What you're quantifying as "anti-Trump bias" is based on pro-fact statements, including ones from experts who work on behalf of the American people. Trump has pumped out detrimental disinformation. At a Thursday news briefing, Trump trumpeted that chloroquine had shown “very, very encouraging early results” and said “we’re going to be able to make that drug available almost immediately.” Minutes later, FDA Commissioner Stephen Hahn, an oncologist, clarified that the drug would be available “in the setting of a clinical trial — a large, pragmatic clinical trial — to actually gather that information and answer the question that needs to be answered and — asked and answered.”
Joshua Sharfstein, a vice dean at Johns Hopkins University’s Bloomberg School of Public Health and a former principal deputy FDA commissioner refuted your sentiments too, stating: “efforts to widely distribute unproven treatments are misguided at best and dangerous at worst.” He, like other professionals have urged that optimism be bridled until much larger and better organized studies, such as the one by WHO, is complete. As already explained, for months countries have desperately deployed all available arsenal in combatting the virus that has caused this global pandemic, because there's not any established treatments. Some have reported success with these antimalarials, others abject failures.
I guess it depends on your own personal values and politics, doesn't it?
Oh absolutely it does. It depends on whether your personal values are based on facts, integrity, and responsible honesty rather than political allegiance.
I come from a family of physicians who are on the front lines of battle against this virus, courageously persevering through relentless heartbreak and hardships, making tremendous sacrifices and devoting every bit of themselves in their dedicated service to others. They don't have the time to play on an Internet forum like you do. I haven't hugged my own parent in weeks now because we have only seen one another via FaceTime as she self-isolates in our house and we live apart for our protection since she's a physician treating patients with COVID-19. She doesn't want to risk contaminating her loved ones. She has bruises and welts on her face and body, from the heavy protective gear that she is grateful to have because there are other doctors in America (and nurses) lacking these necessities. She's seen the refrigerated trucks brought to the hospital to load the dead bodies. Those dead people received the very treatments Trump has gushingly boasted about being "game changers." You have not. You sit on the internet writing out hurtful posts to young strangers while those who actually put in the work to know that what you claim just isn't so are doing their jobs. You've sacrificed nothing. My uncle who is also a physician is living in an unfinished space, not properly insulated yet, while his pregnant wife is in their new house, because he cannot jeopardize his family. He's in his 30s, has now written out his will, put his financial affairs in order, because the risk to his life is real.
Yes, my family's personal values are certainly different from yours. I've never been prouder of my family.
