980 replies to this topic

[gamesguru]

It's not as if Trump had pulled HCQ out of his backside or off some quack medical website.

 

I see. So it was effective for him? Perhaps that explains his use of convalescent antibodies?

 

Amazing how short of breath he still appeared on the White House balcony, and how worried his medical team was about his oxygen levels. It's almost as if COVID was more severe than he had initially led on. He even mentions "the vaccines are coming momentarily" in this video, suggesting a change of heart.

 

 

He also mentions, "we have the best medicines, all developed recently." This suggests he's not relying on repurposed medicines like HCQ or Ivermectin, which were developed in the 1940s and 1970s respectively.

 

While Trump initially defended HCQ in the first half of 2020, his advocacy dwindled by the time he was sick in late 2020. According to doctor's reports, HCQ was not one of the 8 drugs Trump was given to relieve COVID.

[Daniel Cooper]

I see. So it was effective for him? Perhaps that explains his use of convalescent antibodies?

 

Amazing how short of breath he still appeared on the White House balcony, and how worried his medical team was about his oxygen levels. It's almost as if COVID was more severe than he had initially led on. He even mentions "the vaccines are coming momentarily" in this video, suggesting a change of heart.

 

 

He also mentions, "we have the best medicines, all developed recently." This suggests he's not relying on repurposed medicines like HCQ or Ivermectin, which were developed in the 1940s and 1970s respectively.

 

While Trump initially defended HCQ in the first half of 2020, his advocacy dwindled by the time he was sick in late 2020. According to doctor's reports, HCQ was not one of the 8 drugs Trump was given to relieve COVID.

 

You did read in my post that I have no idea whether HCQ works or not, right?

 

My point is that there was the appearance of a bias against HCQ for several reasons, amongst them being that Trump had suggested it.  We after all had a clearly fabricated study of HCQ that passed peer review in the most prestigious medical journal on the planet when a cursory review of the data showed that it could not be real data. The Lancet had to withdraw that study a few months later. 

 

Other examples of a bias were a tendency for studies of HCQ to start with very sick later stage patients, when everyone knows that antivirals don't normally perform well in those situations. Most antivirals for any acutely significant infection normally specify that they must be started early in the infection (a few days at most - e.g. Tamiflu). Even the currently approved antivirals for covid specify that they must be started in the first few days. Studies done on covid patients that were actually hospitalized were never going to show a positive outcome, as indeed would be the case if you tested currently approved antivirals in that situation.

 

HCQ may or may not work. I have no idea. But looking at the early studies it appeared that a lot of researchers really didn't want it to work. That's not how science works.

Edited by Daniel Cooper, 25 July 2023 - 03:02 PM.

[Dorian Grey]

It shouldn't be all that surprising Trump's enthusiasm for HCQ faded during the second half of 2020.  He is after all a medical layman, & the propaganda campaign against HCQ was as fierce as anything we've seen since WWII.  

 

Dozens of trials, all on hospitalized patients had been quickly organized to produce a steady stream of failures in the news.  Every week, another "final nail in the coffin" trial result.  HOORAY!  We have no effective outpatient treatment!!!  Dr Peter McCullough called this "unwishful thinking" in his book The Courage to Face COVID-19.  

 

When layman are struck down with life threatening disease, they stop arguing with their doctors, and start getting very cooperative.  It certainly would have been interesting if Trump had insisted on HCQ.  He might have spent his isolation days walking in a park, like I did, and the history of US COVID response might have been dramatically different in 2021.  

[Daniel Cooper]

BTW - when I say that I don't know whether HCQ works or not, that's not me making a statement on the state of the research as it exists today. That's really driven more by my laziness in not having kept up. 

 

I got frustrated some time ago in that I could tell that some (maybe even a lot) of the research seemed to be biased and driven by things other than getting at the truth. That had really muddied the waters and I just sort of threw up my hands and gave up trying to sort it out.

 

It may turn out that HCQ has a benefit. Or it may turn out that it does not. But what really concerns me is that in my opinion the science was getting pushed in a direction based on political and economic goals.

 

 

Edited by Daniel Cooper, 25 July 2023 - 04:54 PM.

[Hip]

It may turn out that HCQ has a benefit. Or it may turn out that it does not. But what really concerns me is that in my opinion the science was getting pushed in a direction based on political and economic goals.

 

I think the skepticism of various potential COVID treatments was well placed on scientific grounds. 

 

If you want to go back to Medieval medicine, where people believed without any evidence that blood letting for example would cure illness, then by all means start using medical treatments without evidence.

 

What separates modern scientific medicine from snake oil treatment is the insistence of evidence. 

 

 

 

Here is an archive copy of a list of about four dozen potential COVID antiviral treatments that were being considered at the beginning of the pandemic. As you will appreciate, pretty much all of these antivirals did not pan out, as they were demonstrated to be ineffective. 

 

It would make no sense to throw these four dozen drugs down the throats of COVID patients in the hope that one might work. 

 

So you need evidence based medicine, not hype based medicine.

[joesixpack]

I think the skepticism of various potential COVID treatments was well placed on scientific grounds. 

 

If you want to go back to Medieval medicine, where people believed without any evidence that blood letting for example would cure illness, then by all means start using medical treatments without evidence.

 

What separates modern scientific medicine from snake oil treatment is the insistence of evidence. 

 

 

 

Here is an archive copy of a list of about four dozen potential COVID antiviral treatments that were being considered at the beginning of the pandemic. As you will appreciate, pretty much all of these antivirals did not pan out, as they were demonstrated to be ineffective. 

 

It would make no sense to throw these four dozen drugs down the throats of COVID patients in the hope that one might work. 

 

So you need evidence based medicine, not hype based medicine.

 

What harm is there in throwing these medications, proven to be harmless, "down the throats of Covid victims", within 3 days of symptoms appearing? Incidentally, the studies that trashed HCQ and Ivermectin, did not follow the FCCC protocols. They all started after 3 days of symptoms, and varied on the number of days administered and doses. All designed to fail.

 

Why would you design studies meant to fail, unless you are trying to get a EUA for a vaccine that you cannot qualify for, unless there are no therapeutics to treat the disease?

 

I acquired Omicron recently, at least I assume it was Omicron, or another variant. I woke up sick. Had a runny nose for a few days before. The day I knew I had it, I woke up with nausea, threw up, food and liquid tasted strange - bitter, light headed and disoriented, diarrhea. As soon as symptoms started, I started the FLCCC protocol, which includes 5 days of HCQ and Ivermectin, and a bunch of supplements, most of which I had on hand. I did not have Azithromycin, only Cipro. I did not know if that was a good substitute, so I skipped it. Symptoms were gone by day 2. They are still gone.

 

It worked for me. A double benefit, this protocol is similar to the vaccine recovery protocol, so I may have that out of my system as well.

 

I am not a scientist, just a person that followed a protocol developed by a scientist, that worked.

 

That is all.

[Dorian Grey]

I think the skepticism of various potential COVID treatments was well placed on scientific grounds. 

 

If you want to go back to Medieval medicine, where people believed without any evidence that blood letting for example would cure illness, then by all means start using medical treatments without evidence.

 

What separates modern scientific medicine from snake oil treatment is the insistence of evidence. 

 

 

 

Here is an archive copy of a list of about four dozen potential COVID antiviral treatments that were being considered at the beginning of the pandemic. As you will appreciate, pretty much all of these antivirals did not pan out, as they were demonstrated to be ineffective. 

 

It would make no sense to throw these four dozen drugs down the throats of COVID patients in the hope that one might work. 

 

So you need evidence based medicine, not hype based medicine.

 

Agree with Joe above.  When plague comes, you really don't have a lot of time to err on the side of scientific research & clinical trials.  You've got to allow doctors in the front lines to try a few things, hopefully based on some form of existing evidence (Chloroquine is a potent inhibitor of SARS coronavirus infection and spread / 2005 / PMID: 16115318).

 

If many start reporting success with a given protocol (COVID-19 outpatients: early risk-stratified treatment with zinc plus low-dose hydroxychloroquine and azithromycin: a retrospective case series study (PMC7587171 / “Therefore, the odds of hospitalisation of treated patients was 84% less than in the untreated patients.”), then halting treatment & starting placebo controlled trials become an ethical issue. 

 

Do we really start randomized lottery trials, where some patients get the protocol doctors are reporting success with and others get a placebo and we watch them die?  Sufficient for others perhaps, but for me and my loved ones, please, for the love of God give us the protocol and let us take our chances.  

 

If your protocol has a long history of safe use, and is even sold over the counter in many areas, so much the better.  You'll know if it works soon enough simply by looking at the areas where it is utilized, and you won't be dooming a substantial percentage of a placebo cohort to die unnecessarily.   

 

Be a Florence Nightingale, not a Josef Mengele.  

Edited by Dorian Grey, 26 July 2023 - 02:37 PM.

[Hip]

What harm is there in throwing these medications, proven to be harmless, "down the throats of Covid victims", within 3 days of symptoms appearing? Incidentally, the studies that trashed HCQ and Ivermectin, did not follow the FCCC protocols. They all started after 3 days of symptoms, and varied on the number of days administered and doses. All designed to fail.

Firstly, if the whole world started using these drugs for COVID infections without any evidence of efficacy, it would create a serious drug shortage. There was already starting to be an issue for lupus patients who needed hydroxychloroquine daily to treat their illness. Pharma factories cannot just gear up overnight to making billions of doses of a drug, if the whole world suddenly decides it wants to buy that drug.

 

Secondly, some of these drugs may do more harm than good. Without clinical trials, you cannot know if it is safe. Some studies showed that hydroxychloroquine was actually causing more COVID deaths, for example.

 

Thirdly, if you are going to throw 4 dozen drugs down someones throat, you may get all sorts of drug interactions and side effects.

 

Fourthly, if you randomly throw drugs down someone's throat for COVID, then that starts a trend where doctors might start throwing random drugs down patients' throats for any serious disease. Got serious heart disease? Here you are, take a few dozen random drugs to see if they help.

Edited by Hip, 26 July 2023 - 03:50 PM.

[Daniel Cooper]

Firstly, if the whole world started using these drugs for COVID infections without any evidence of efficacy, it would create a serious drug shortage. There was already starting to be an issue for lupus patients who needed hydroxychloroquine daily to treat their illness. Pharma factories cannot just gear up overnight to making billions of doses of a drug, if the whole world suddenly decides it wants to buy that drug.

 

Secondly, some of these drugs may do more harm than good. Without clinical trials, you cannot know if it is safe. Some studies showed that hydroxychloroquine was actually causing more COVID deaths, for example.

 

Thirdly, if you are going to throw 4 dozen drugs down someones throat, you may get all sorts of drug interactions and side effects.

 

Fourthly, if you randomly throw drugs down someone's throat for COVID, then that starts a trend where doctors might start throwing random drugs down patients' throats for any serious disease. Got serious heart disease? Here you are, take a few dozen random drugs to see if they help.

 

I don't think he was suggesting that you would give these drugs to all covid patients. But, a reasonable sized trial of early stage covid patients would have been in order rather than testing patients that were on death's door which were pretty much guaranteed to fail. Basically if you're going to do something like that you consider it a "Hail Mary" for the afflicted patients and not consider it as a treatment trial. If I took Paxlovid or Lagevrio and gave it to seriously sick covid patients already in the hospital or on a ventilator that trial would also fail. Unfortunately, these "death's door" trials were used as evidence that HCQ and Ivermectin did not work when that was completely inappropriate. All antivirals are pretty much 99.9% guaranteed not to work in those circumstances and such a trial is not valid evidence against effectivity since it is the expected outcome.

 

Testing a drug combination therapy like this FLCC protocol is more complicated. Firstly, you need a clearly elucidated rationale for why this combination should work. Then you need some reasoning and testing (in animals) for why this combination should not cause any unwanted interactions. Then you consider a human trial. I don't know enough about the FLCC protocol to know to what extent that was done.

Edited by Daniel Cooper, 26 July 2023 - 04:10 PM.

[Dorian Grey]

Firstly, if the whole world started using these drugs for COVID infections without any evidence of efficacy, it would create a serious drug shortage. There was already starting to be an issue for lupus patients who needed hydroxychloroquine daily to treat their illness. Pharma factories cannot just gear up overnight to making billions of doses of a drug, if the whole world suddenly decides it wants to buy that drug.

 

Secondly, some of these drugs may do more harm than good. Without clinical trials, you cannot know if it is safe. Some studies showed that hydroxychloroquine was actually causing more COVID deaths, for example.

 

Thirdly, if you are going to throw 4 dozen drugs down someones throat, you may get all sorts of drug interactions and side effects.

 

Fourthly, if you randomly throw drugs down someone's throat for COVID, then that starts a trend where doctors might start throwing random drugs down patients' throats for any serious disease. Got serious heart disease? Here you are, take a few dozen random drugs to see if they help.

 

The great HCQ shortage of 2020 was a rubbish hysteria.  Trump bought 70 MILLION doses of the stuff, & it was sitting in a warehouse.  Del Bigtree was reporting one drug maker in India said they could produce 4 TONS of HCQ base (not finished tablets, but active ingredient) in 10 days.  

 

HCQ had been over the counter in more parts of the world than not, including India, Africa, most of Asia, France & parts of Canada; & used safely for half a century.  Considered safer than aspirin or even Tylenol by most traditional measures.  The great torsades de pointes scare was pure propaganda.  You don't withhold a drug as safe as HCQ when thousands are dropping down dead every week.  

 

I agree, you don't prescribe the kitchen sink in situations like this, but you've got to either try something, or sit on your hands and watch people die.  Ask those who died whether or not they might have liked to try something, & I think you'll find most would.  

 

To opine that swift action during a deadly pandemic might lead to careless development and deploying of new drugs for common diseases is a rubbish argument.  I expect more from you.  

[Hip]

I agree, you don't prescribe the kitchen sink in situations like this, but you've got to either try something, or sit on your hands and watch people die.  Ask those who died whether or not they might have liked to try something, & I think you'll find most would.  

 

You seem to think that no clinical trials were conducted. On the contrary, trials of lots of supplements and drugs were performed. The trouble is that nearly all trials failed to find a therapeutic effect. If a definitive therapeutic effect were observed, you can be sure the drug would used to treat COVID patients. 

 

You appear to be arguing that even if no definitive therapeutic effect was found, COVID patients should still be given the drug.

Edited by Hip, 26 July 2023 - 04:44 PM.

[joesixpack]

Speaking to the issue regarding swift action during a pandemic, leading to careless and dangerous deployment of drugs, we come to the issue of the vaccines, and boosters that are still being pushed.

 

There is a new study out of Switzerland, that was completed, independent of the pharmacologic industry. 777 healthcare workers had their blood tested by the Doctors running the study, 3 days after they received boosters. 1 in 35 had biomarkers showing evidence of Myocardial injury.

 

That is a big number. Because these people were tested, they were warned about their condition, were able to be advised to rest, not exercise, and receive treatment if necessary. That is a luxury the rest of the world has not had.

 

If every person that got a booster had been advised to get a blood test for heart damage biomarkers, a lot of "died suddenly" events may have been avoided.

 

There is a serious ethical issue involved with regard to informed consent, with the vaccines and boosters. 

 

Here is a video that goes through the study in detail, the main points are covered in the first 10 minutes.  https://www.youtube....h?v=cd_RTf_ForA

Edited by joesixpack, 26 July 2023 - 05:06 PM.

[Dorian Grey]

You seem to think that no clinical trials were conducted. On the contrary, trials of lots of supplements and drugs were performed. The trouble is that nearly all trials failed to find a therapeutic effect. If a definitive therapeutic effect were observed, you can be sure the drug would used to treat COVID patients.

You appear to be arguing that even if no definitive therapeutic effect was found, COVID patients should still be given the drug.

PCR tests took 3 to 5 days, & this was after symptoms started, and you then had to get enrolled and started on the med.

Dr Zelenko started his patients on meds before PCR results even came back. This is how he succeeded and others failed.

Never heard of other trials moving this fast until they trialed Paxlovid, wich never would have worked if it took a week to get patients tested and started on the med.

[Hip]

Dr Zelenko started his patients on meds before PCR results even came back. This is how he succeeded and others failed.

 

Perhaps Zelenko would have succeeded in getting others interested in his protocol had there not been so much garbage and noise about the pandemic posted on all the media and communications channels. 

 

In an emergency situation, such as a war, integrity of communications is vital. We should not have let all these scientifically illiterate people post their views online, as that pollutes the communications channels. Posting that pollution and misinformation in effect is working for the enemy. During wartime, if you are caught working for the enemy, you are summarily shot. The scientifically illiterate misinformation merchants who misguided society during the pandemic should have been dealt with more robustly.

Edited by Hip, 26 July 2023 - 10:16 PM.

[Dorian Grey]

Perhaps Zelenko would have succeeded in getting others interested in his protocol had there not been so much garbage and noise about the pandemic posted on all the media and communications channels. 

 

In an emergency situation, such as a war, integrity of communications is vital. We should not have let all these scientifically illiterate people post their views online, as that pollutes the communications channels. Posting that pollution and misinformation in effect is working for the enemy. During wartime, if you are caught working for the enemy, you are summarily shot. The scientifically illiterate misinformation merchants who misguided society during the pandemic should have been dealt with more robustly.

 

Oh Hip...  There were TENS of BILLIONS of dollars at stake, and everything depended on the go-to med identified in 2005 failing, so the EUAs for the new vaccines & drugs would fly.  Don't tell be these guys didn't know exactly what they were doing.  They were designing trials to FAIL.  

 

They failed to treat early (2-5 days Tamiflu/Paxlovid model).  They actually went so far as to do all the big RCTs only on hospitalized patients in critical condition, & the few outpatient trials they did required a positive PCR for enrollment.  Zelenko treated early, without even waiting for PCR confirmation of COVID infection (which he said took around 5 days back in early 2020)

 

They failed to risk stratify...  With a virus that primarily kills seniors, you restrict your cohort to this age group in order to generate a strong signal.  Enrolling anyone over 18 is guaranteed to water down any benefit to non-statistical significance.  Zelenko risk stratified, and got a strong signal.  

 

They overdosed their patients...  Recovery & Solidarity used double & triple the standard dose, & then monitored patients for cardiac effects, which were known to occur only when you double or triple dosed patients.  

 

There is evil in the world, and it's not limited to uneducated yahoos.  

[Hip]

Oh Hip...  There were TENS of BILLIONS of dollars at stake, and everything depended on the go-to med identified in 2005 failing, so the EUAs for the new vaccines & drugs would fly.  Don't tell be these guys didn't know exactly what they were doing.  They were designing trials to FAIL.  

 
The concept of "trials designed to fail" appears to be something the pessimists on this site made up, with zero supportive evidence of course, nevertheless everyone here starts believing it like sheep. I don't know who originated this concept, but everyone here has jumped on the bandwagon.

 

Are you aware that depressed people always imagine the most bleak, pessimistic worldview possible, by the way?

 

Given that you believe there is such deep corruption in science, that you believe the whole system of science is rotten to the core, how did we ever put man on the Moon? How did we ever move from the Wright brothers to jet airliners in a matter of decades? How did we electrify the world with electric power? How did medical science manage to extend average lifespan from about 40 years as it was in the 1850s, to about 80s years at present?

 

I am interested to hear how you think such scientific and technological progress can occur in the midst of such widespread rotten corruption?

 

 

 

Edited by Hip, 26 July 2023 - 11:28 PM.

[Dorian Grey]

 
The concept of "trials designed to fail" appears to be something the pessimists on this site made up, with zero supportive evidence of course, nevertheless everyone here starts believing it like sheep. I don't know who originated this concept, but everyone here has jumped on the bandwagon.

 

Are you aware that depressed people always imagine the most bleak, pessimistic worldview possible, by the way?

 

Given that you believe there is such deep corruption in science, that you believe the whole system of science is rotten to the core, how did we ever put man on the Moon? How did we ever move from the Wright brothers to jet airliners in a matter of decades? How did we electrify the world with electric power? How did medical science manage to extend average lifespan from about 40 years as it was in the 1850s, to about 80s years at present?

 

I am interested to hear how you think such scientific and technological progress can occur in the midst of such widespread rotten corruption?

 

Are you contending the major HCQ trials were not limited to hospitalized patients?  Or that this is a good time to start antiviral therapy (after patients become critically ill?)  How well do you think Tamiflu would work on critically ill influenza patients?  What if we waited till patients were hospitalized in critical condition before we started them on Paxlovid?  

 

Did the doctors designing the trials simply forget when the best time to initiate therapy is for fast moving respiratory virus?  How did they remember this when it came time to trial Paxlovid?  

 

Scientific and technological progress has become largely profit driven.  Get in the way, and prepare to get run over!  

Edited by Dorian Grey, 27 July 2023 - 12:56 AM.

[Hip]

Are you contending the major HCQ trials were not limited to hospitalized patients?

 

It's one thing to find a flaw in a trial's methodology, but quite another thing to claim, as you do, that the outcome of all clinical trials is controlled by some global nefarious forces, and that scientific truth no longer exists as such, because all scientific results are controlled and determined by these nefarious forces.

 

That's an extremely bold claim you are making. Yet you have zero evidence to support your assertions. 

 

The only support you have is from the Longecity sheep, who seem to like this cynical nefarious forces conspiracy theory.

Edited by Hip, 27 July 2023 - 04:15 AM.

[Dorian Grey]

It's one thing to find a flaw in a trial's methodology, but quite another thing to claim, as you do, that the outcome of all clinical trials is controlled by some global nefarious forces, and that scientific truth no longer exists as such, because all scientific results are controlled and determined by these nefarious forces.

 

That's an extremely bold claim you are making. Yet you have zero evidence to support your assertions. 

 

The only support you have is from the Longecity sheep, who seem to like this cynical nefarious forces conspiracy theory.

 

A flaw in a trial's methodology?  Are you serious? 

 

They saw patients who'd contracted a fast moving and sometimes fatal respiratory virus, & told them to ISOLATE AT HOME TILL THEY STARTED TURNING BLUE!  (for Christ sake).  Then, when they crumped into ICU in acute respiratory distress, they initiated a trial of an agent that was shown to inhibit viral replication.  

 

You don't need a PhD to know whoever set up these trials was either stoned, stupid, or more likely...  Seriously corrupt.  I can't believe anyone might even be coy about this and opine it might have been an innocent mistake.  

 

Yer spinnin' yer wheels mate...  Graspin' at straws...  Or arguing sophistically.  

[Hip]

Can you explain how you believe the nefarious forces who deliberately design trials to fail contact the various researchers around the world, and organise a trial methodology designed to fail? Obviously these nefarious forces must maintain absolute secrecy, because if this manipulation you say is going on ever came to light, then it would cause a worldwide scandal.

 

So how do the nefarious forces contact these researchers, in a way that maintains total secrecy? And how do they ensure cooperation from the researchers? What happens if one of the contacted researchers becomes a whistle blower, and sends the email from the nefarious forces to a media organisation? How do the nefarious forces prevent whistle blowing?

 

 

 

I can agree with you that it would have been more interesting to see a trial of potential antivirals given at an earlier stage of the infection. But I don't agree that trials which did not conduct early treatments were deliberately set up to fail by nefarious forces.

 

Edited by Hip, 27 July 2023 - 03:41 PM.

[Dorian Grey]

Can you explain how you believe the nefarious forces who deliberately design trials to fail contact the various researchers around the world, and organise a trial methodology designed to fail? Obviously these nefarious forces must maintain absolute secrecy, because if this manipulation you say is going on ever came to light, then it would cause a worldwide scandal.

 

So how do the nefarious forces contact these researchers, in a way that maintains total secrecy? And how do they ensure cooperation from the researchers? What happens if one of the contacted researchers becomes a whistle blower, and sends the email from the nefarious forces to a media organisation? How do the nefarious forces prevent whistle blowing?

 

 

 

I can agree with you that it would have been more interesting to see a trial of potential antivirals given at an earlier stage of the infection. But I don't agree that trials which did not conduct early treatments were deliberately set up to fail by nefarious forces.

 

The evidence speaks for itself...  Either you can leave fast moving respiratory virus for a week before you start treating them, or you can't.  

 

What did we learn from Tamiflu & influenza?  

 

What did we learn from Paxlovid & COVID?  

 

What do we know about the timelines for the HCQ trials?  

 

What do we know about the timelines of the front line doctors who reported & documented their success with HCQ?  

 

What do we know about a "scientist" who claims his late treatment (after 7 days) HCQ trial has "proven" HCQ is worthless for COVID?  

(hint: he's either a fool, or corrupt; there are no other possibilities)  

Edited by Dorian Grey, 27 July 2023 - 03:52 PM.

[Mind]

In regards to HCQ, sorry to remind everyone again, but recall that someone or some group created a couple of large fraudulent "trials" which were released to the public right at the time when calls for investigating the drug were growing rapidly. As far as I am aware, no one was investigated or punished for deceiving the public in this manner. The US national media barely did any follow-ups on the story to correct their reporting . Health bureaucrats never said "whoops, sorry for spreading fake studies about HCQ."

 

Someone or some group must have felt threatened by HCQ. So threatened that widespread censorship was employed on the Internet. I was threatened with the loss of my job if I talked about it on social media. Never have I seen such vitriol for a potentially beneficial (very safe and cheap) therapeutic. There is often a lot of support for off-label drug use, alternative approaches, and experimental bio-hacks, but not so during the COVID panic. For whatever reason, normal people felt compelled to spew hatred at anyone who discussed different modalities for treating COVID....and it continues to this day.

[Daniel Cooper]

I think there is certainly a bias on the part of the large pharmaceutical companies and therefore the FDA not to want to know if a cheap, readily available, off patent drug like HCQ might work. It's sort of a built in bias that probably affects how things are investigated (or ignored) without some secret cabal gathering in the middle of the night in some dark smoke filled room to discuss "How do with make sure nobody get's any bright ideas of using HCQ to treat covid".

 

It's mostly things that go unsaid because nobody in the halls of power needs to say them. Of course big pharma has no interest in finding new uses for old off patent drugs. They never have. All the boys down at the FDA who's planned career path of doing maybe a decade or so at the administration then making a slide over to a nice corporate pharmaceutical gig at some point don't need to be told that their future bosses/benefactors don't want this. They know.  And they know if they hope to get hired for that cushy corner office it's in their interest to give as little support to something like that as possible, if not actively working against it.

 

I don't think there was ever a real organized conspiracy against HCQ. These sorts of things tend to be self organizing when people with their hands on the levers of power all have their own self interests aligned in certain way. Heck, a bias such as this is usually so subtle, so insidious that the people involved may not even admit to themselves that they are actively working against what might otherwise be in the public interest. They will generally rationalize that they are just doing due diligence to ensure the public safety.  The problem with that is you end up with drugs like remdesivir which had a very tenuous claim to effectiveness (certainly no better than HCQ) but without the decades of safe use, being approved while HCQ is not. That's really a perverse outcome if you'll pause to think about it. A very expensive, untried drug with very little safety data is approved for use on trial results that were all over the place with respect to effectiveness (every similar to the story of contemporary trials of HCQ at that early stage in covid) which is given the FDA stamp of approval, while a drug well know to be safe and cheap with at least similar trial results is shut out.

 

At the end of the day, money talks.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited by Daniel Cooper, 27 July 2023 - 09:41 PM.

[Hip]

At the end of the day, money talks.

 

Indeed, which is why in any situation, analysts will use what is known as stakeholder analysis to determine what outcomes will likely occur.

 

I bet most people here have not heard of stakeholder analysis. Stakeholder analysis is how the real world works.

 

The basic idea of stakeholder analysis is that "money talks". So in any given situation, whether in commerce, politics, international relations, etc, you work out who are the major stakeholders (these stakeholders could be nation states, governments, corporations, rich individuals, etc), and what each stakeholder stands to gain or lose financially depending on the course of events and the outcome of a given situtation. 

 

In stakeholder analysis, it's usually the most powerful stakeholders, and the stakeholders who stand to gain or lose the most, who play the most dominant role in determining or forcing the outcome. In other words, the bigs guys tend to win. 

 

In any given situation, multiple stakeholders with the same objective will team up to become a very powerful bloc. But multiple stakeholders with the a different objective will also team up. So in other words, all the stakeholders take their sides, and fight for dominance. Whichever bloc of stakeholders has the highest wealth and power tends to win.

 

 

 

Some analysts have used stakeholder analysis to accurately predict the future, based on weighing up all the opposing stakeholders, and working out which are the largest most powerful bloc of stakeholders, because the largest and most powerful will invariably win.

 

Corporations often use stakeholder analysis to figure out who their allies are, so that they can team up with these ally stakeholder and form a more powerful bloc. This is how the real world actually works. 

 

 

 

In the case of the pandemic, the largest and most powerful stakeholders are the nation states. These are also the stakeholders who stand to gain or lose the most, because as we saw, $trillions were lost of by nation states due to lockdowns, social distancing, etc, due to the affect on the economy.

 

So you can be sure that if a successful strategy were available (such as early hydroxychloroquine to reduce death) to these nation states to prevent those economic loses, they would have ruthlessly followed that strategy. And they would have dominated over any pharmaceutical company, as nation states are far more powerful stakeholders than any individual pharma corporation.

Edited by Hip, 27 July 2023 - 10:22 PM.

[Dorian Grey]

I can sympathize with those trying to get the early trials done.  Just finding a place to get tested, & getting results from your PCR (no lateral flow / rapid tests back in 2020) could burn through 4 or 5 days.  Then you've got to get interviewed & enrolled in a trial, and if outpatient, I saw at least one where they overnighted the meds in the mail (once you were properly enrolled!)

 

We didn't know 5 days (determined during Paxlovid trial) was the upper limit to start treatment with antivirals, but we should have had a clue from a quarter century experience with Tamiflu.  

 

I'd gladly forgive & forget...  Bury the hatchet if those who ran HCQ trials that included patients who were symptomatic for more 3 to 5 days (Paxlovid model) would RETRACT their studies and admit it was kind of crazy thinking you could wait a week or more before you started the treatment cohort of your trial.  

 

Sad to think there are still folks waving around the Recovery & Solidarity RCTs, hootin' & hollerin'  about "proof" HCQ is worthless.  

[Dorian Grey]

Indeed, which is why in any situation, analysts will use what is known as stakeholder analysis to determine what outcomes will likely occur.

 

I bet most people here have not heard of stakeholder analysis. Stakeholder analysis is how the real world works.

 

The basic idea of stakeholder analysis is that "money talks". So in any given situation, whether in commerce, politics, international relations, etc, you work out who are the major stakeholders (these stakeholders could be nation states, governments, corporations, rich individuals, etc), and what each stakeholder stands to gain or lose financially depending on the course of events and the outcome of a given situtation. 

 

In stakeholder analysis, it's usually the most powerful stakeholders, and the stakeholders who stand to gain or lose the most, who play the most dominant role in determining or forcing the outcome. In other words, the bigs guys tend to win. 

 

In any given situation, multiple stakeholders with the same objective will team up to become a very powerful bloc. But multiple stakeholders with the a different objective will also team up. So in other words, all the stakeholders take their sides, and fight for dominance. Whichever bloc of stakeholders has the highest wealth and power tends to win.

 

 

 

Some analysts have used stakeholder analysis to accurately predict the future, based on weighing up all the opposing stakeholders, and working out which are the largest most powerful bloc of stakeholders, because the largest and most powerful will invariably win.

 

Corporations often use stakeholder analysis to figure out who their allies are, so that they can team up with these ally stakeholder and form a more powerful bloc. This is how the real world actually works. 

 

 

 

In the case of the pandemic, the largest and most powerful stakeholders are the nation states. These are also the stakeholders who stand to gain or lose the most, because as we saw, $trillions were lost of by nation states due to lockdowns, social distancing, etc, due to the affect on the economy.

 

So you can be sure that if a successful strategy were available (such as early hydroxychloroquine to reduce death) to these nation states to prevent those economic loses, they would have ruthlessly followed that strategy. And they would have dominated over any pharmaceutical company, as nation states are far more powerful stakeholders than any individual pharma corporation. 

 

 

 

c19hcq.org states: "HCQ/CQ was adopted in all or part of 42 countries (57 including non-government medical organizations)" so apparently HCQ was not universally shunned.  I'm sure many of them might have had difficulty getting their patients on the med in a timely manner (3-5 days Paxlovid model). 

Did they do any better than we did?  Well it appears that wouldn't be difficult: https://www.bbc.com/news/61333847

 

Does US really have world's highest Covid death toll?

 

"According to the WHO, in 2020 and 2021 the US recorded more than 930,000 excess deaths, behind India (4.7m), Russia (1.1m) and Indonesia (1m)."

 

"When adjusted for population size, the US slips down the rankings with 140 excess deaths per 100,000 people. But it remains a long way above the global average of 96 per 100,000 - and it's also one of the worst performing among the most developed nations."

Edited by Dorian Grey, 27 July 2023 - 11:00 PM.

[Hip]

"When adjusted for population size, the US slips down the rankings with 140 excess deaths per 100,000 people. But it remains a long way above the global average of 96 per 100,000 - and it's also one of the worst performing among the most developed nations."

 

The US is by far the most individualist nation on Earth, were people are more likely to do what's in their best interests, rather than make sacrifices to do what serves the greater good. Thus with its rebellious individualist populace flouting the guidelines and rules put in place by the US government to try to control the virus, it is not surprising that the US has high deaths per capita.

 

Everything has its pros and cons. There are many good things about individualism, but clearly an individualist culture is a disaster in times of a pandemic. Whereas the communitarian culture found in Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, etc worked remarkably well during the pandemic. People pulled together to fight a common enemy in these communitarian countries of Asia. Whereas in the US, the enemy of the people was the government and the health authorities! The populace decided to go to war with their government during the pandemic, instead of going to war against the virus!

 

Europe too is an individualist region, so also fared far worse than the communitarian countries of Asia.

 

COVID deaths in these communitarian countries were some 1000% lower than the US and Europe.

Edited by Hip, 28 July 2023 - 12:04 AM.

[Dorian Grey]

Agree, good point Hip!  The West also has the inflammaging and diabesity thing going on. 

 

Unfortunately, these and our individualist nature only make any attempt at treatment more imperative.  

 

An aging, obese population and government that doesn't want to even try to treat is a most unfortunate scenario.  

 

 

[Dorian Grey]

I was thinking some more about failure to treat, & it occurred to me how much more important treatment was in 2020 compared to 2022 when Paxlovid showed up.  

 

The original SARS-CoV-2 virus was quite a brutal bug when it first escaped from the lab, but over many months and mutations mellowed out quite nicely.  I actually caught omicron in January 2022, and (with the help of a little HCQ) it was a walk in the park.  

 

I still remember reading the first hand accounts of how sick patients were getting in 2020, & how the government was insisting nothing would help.  Don't take the deadly HCQ...  Don't take aspirin to try to prevent blood clots...  Don't fool around with Vitamin-D or Zinc, as they haven't been proven to help.  Just isolate for a couple of years & be patient while we do our trials and develop vaccines and new pharmaceuticals.  

 

Vaccines came out in early 2021, & I guess they may have saved quite a few people from death & disease, but what struck me as ironic was Paxlovid getting its EUA almost precisely when omicron arrived on the scene and swiftly circled the globe.  Big Pharma's billion dollar baby that was supposed to save the world arrived when it really wasn't needed by most of humanity, though I guess it benefits some badly co-morbid patients from the kinder gentler omicron.  

 

Bottom line...  I think one of the most important lessons coming out of this pandemic, was the importance of aggressive efforts for early treatment, early on, when the pathogen is most lethal.  You've got to let front line doctors try a few things and have a system where they can report what they see working.  If you wait patiently for clinical trials and new pharmaceuticals while hundreds of thousands die, your results are likely to arrive just as the virus mutates into a relatively benign form, and your new potions are far less valuable.  

 

Make a bold and aggressive effort early on, & you may or may not get lucky.  You may even cause some harm, so informed consent from the patients would be essential; though I reckon you would have had a lot of willing volunteers back in the bad old days of 2020.  

Edited by Dorian Grey, 28 July 2023 - 04:56 PM.

[Florin]

The US is by far the most individualist nation on Earth, were people are more likely to do what's in their best interests, rather than make sacrifices to do what serves the greater good. Thus with its rebellious individualist populace flouting the guidelines and rules put in place by the US government to try to control the virus, it is not surprising that the US has high deaths per capita.
 
Everything has its pros and cons. There are many good things about individualism, but clearly an individualist culture is a disaster in times of a pandemic. Whereas the communitarian culture found in Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, etc worked remarkably well during the pandemic. People pulled together to fight a common enemy in these communitarian countries of Asia. Whereas in the US, the enemy of the people was the government and the health authorities! The populace decided to go to war with their government during the pandemic, instead of going to war against the virus!
 
Europe too is an individualist region, so also fared far worse than the communitarian countries of Asia.
 
COVID deaths in these communitarian countries were some 1000% lower than the US and Europe.

 
Australia and NZ aren't that communitarian and did just as well.

 

But a lot of these pandemic superstar countries seem to have way more cases and that might mean more long covid.

Edited by Florin, 28 July 2023 - 08:33 PM.