I enjoy listening to Chris's podcasts, so I have to disagree with assessment. He has no bias whatsoever. What he has been saying all along is as an anti-viral it should be evaluated earlier in the disease progression and with proper clinical trials to determine it's effectiveness as a treatment. Everyone, especially Numbers, is so politically charged over this it clouds people's judgement. Personally, I am waiting on some clinical trials that have just started on HCQ as a PEP, a PREP and as a treatment for those early in the disease progression. That is where I would expect it's greatest benefit if there is any. To date, that data does not exist. To make any judgement on HCQ without that is premature. That is all Chris has been saying as well.
Politics has nothing to do with my criticism of HCQ. The science just isn't there to support its overuse in COVID to date. Martenson has some good content but he's very biased towards HCQ, as I posted last night. How can he claim to be balanced on the lupus angle and include that crap excerpt from some Italian blog (can't even tell what it is, but you also posted it), as if it's valid and not include the guidance from the Lupus Foundation of America, who represent the health of lupus patients, who say there's no evidence HCQ prevents contracting COVID-19? Or include the study that I linked 2 days ago that showed that lupus patients on HCQ actually have disproportionately high rates of COVID (not a good sign for its use as a preventative)? If you don't think that's biased I don't know what to tell you. I'm just asking for balance and good sources and he provided neither.
My main point all along is not that I "know" it doesn't work in some particular settings - it's that the data, to date, absolutely do not support it being used anywhere near as heavily as it has been and it's absolutely not a "cure," as many have called it. I would have simply preferred to wait for the results of the controlled clinical trials going on before ramping up use through the roof, for political reasons. You can go on believing Chris Martenson (a smart guy, but who has never done any clinical research I know of), the far right wing AAPS, and Dr. Raoult, whose original "gamechanging" study has been discredited, and some Italian guy, while I'll take Derek Lowe, Anthony Fauci, and the FASEB paper I linked last night, which did the most thorough literature review, to date, on HCQ and recommended that "HCQ only be used for COVID‐19 in the context of a carefully constructed randomized clinical trial."
Edit for
@wisr01 - also, dug up my first couple of posts on HCQ and clearly I was excited in the first post, but then a day or so later, skepticism started creeping in, given the way the research was being presented/hawked, which seemed more than a bit unseemly.
So my skepticism and desire to find out if this would hold up to scrutiny and be a "gamechanger" or just another false "cure" claim (it certainly hasn't been a gamechanger or anywhere near a cure) preceded any knowledge of the politics of anyone involved.
I think your singling me out as follows: "Everyone, especially Numbers, is so politically charged over this it clouds people's judgement," was more than a bit unfair given my posting history on this.
The only "political" angle I've taken, which almost everyone in the scientific community agrees with, is that Trump simply had no place lauding the drug the next day and for weeks afterwards, as he has zero expertise in medical matters. That was completely inappropriate and never should've happened.
Follow up on some earlier posts by
@RUfubar and me and others...
Now for some possibly good news. Breaking results on hydroxychloroquine (malaria treatment) in combo with azithromycin (antibiotic often used in pneumonias) show significant reduction in viral load in patients in a study in France. Don't think this is a peer reviewed yet, but it is a placebo controlled field study and these can be very important in emergencies like this.
https://twitter.com/RiganoESQ/status/1239780304082124800
In addition, remdesivir is showing some promising results as are some other anti-viral compounds and remdesivir completes a major phase III clinical trial on 4/3.
https://emedicine.medscape.com/article/2500114-treatment
And lastly, the first patient was enrolled today in a vaccine clinical trial, which will last 6 weeks (this is a preliminary trial just to gauge whether it's worth going to larger trials).
https://www.livescience.com/first-person-coronavirus-vaccine-clinical-trial.html
Dr. Raoult issued the actual paper on HCQ/Azithromycin today (first link) and Mr. Rigano did a spot on Fox tonight (2nd link). Still some skepticism in the medical community, and I have to admit that Mr. Rigano, who is a lawyer, and an advisor to the Stanford School of Medicine, comes off like a salesman in the Fox video, but if Dr. Raoult is correct, this is a game changer.
The data are stunning - 100% virologically cured with the combo by Day 6 vs. 57% cured with just HCQ and 12% in the control. Was a small study (42 patients) though and 6 patients dropped out, which is why some are concerned. However, it should be simple to replicate this on a larger scale and it needs to be done ASAP. I also imagine doctors and patients are going to be demanding these drugs based on this and fortunately both are generic, but I don't know the supply chain landscape.
As an aside it's also way premature to be calling this the 2nd ever 100% virus cure based on that limited of a data set, which is why there's skepticism. It took Pharmasett (and then Gilead who bought them when Merck stupidly failed to buy them) quite some time to make those claims for sofosbuvir curing Hep C, which it has. As an aside, the two active ingredients for Merck's HCV antiviral Zepatier were first scaled up and optimized, before manufacturing and launch, in my group in 2014-2016, but alas, we got to market too late.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/186Bel9RqfsmEx55FDum4eneY_IlWSHnGbj/view
