A Covid Morality Tale
President Donald Trump is currently in Walter Reed Hospital, being treated for Covid19, the infection caused by the SARS-COV-2 virus. According to the NY Times:
One of the therapies being given to Mr. Trump, a cocktail of monoclonal antibodies made by Regeneron, is in the earliest phase of testing and there is only a recent news release from the company on its effectiveness.
Some experts are optimistic that the Regeneron drug works, and support giving patients a therapy that directly attacks the virus. Monoclonal antibodies in general are pretty safe, experts said, and similar ones have been used to treat patients with H.I.V. and Ebola.
Other experts were skeptical.“In my mind these antibodies are experimental,” said Dr. Andre Kalil, an infectious disease specialist at the University of Nebraska, and a principal investigator for the federal study showing remdesivir — the other treatment that is being given to Mr. Trump — sped recovery in hospitalized Covid patients.
“I don’t know how safe they are for the president,” Dr. Kalil said. “They should not be given outside of a clinical trial.”
According to other reports, Trump is also taking vitamin D, zinc, Pepcid, melatonin and aspirin. Notably missing is hydroxychloroquine (HCQ), the malaria drug that Trump touted as “a game changer” in treating Covid19. After his comments in support of HCQ, the drug became a political football, derided as ineffective or even dangerous by Trump’s opponents, yet supported as an effective and inexpensive treatment by a number of prominent doctors around the world.
The real story behind HCQ is the subject of an article by Norman Doige in Tablet Magazine, “Hydroxychlorquine: A Morality Tale”. The article begins:
Early in the coronavirus pandemic, a survey of the world’s frontline physicians showed hydroxychloroquine to be the drug they considered the most effective at treating COVID-19 patients. That was in early April, shortly after a French study showed it was safe and effective in lowering the virus count, at times in combination with azithromycin.
Next we were told hydroxychloroquine was likely ineffective, and also dangerous, and that that French study was flawed and the scientist behind it worthy of mockery. More studies followed, with contradictory results, and then out came what was hailed by some as a definitive study of 96,000 patients showing the drug was most certainly dangerous and ineffective, and indeed that it killed 30% more people than those who didn’t take it. Within days, that study was retracted, with the editor of one of the two most respected medical journals in the Western world conceding it was “a monumental fraud.” And on it went.
I will link to the article below so you can read Norman Doige’s well written account for yourself. I will also be a spoiler and give you a few conclusions here.
HCQ has been in existence since 1946 and widely used since the mid-1950’s. Over that time it has been taken by millions of patients. It was first used for treating malaria, but subsequently proved useful in treating lupus and rheumatism as well. Due to this long experience, doctors understand well what the risks of HCQ are and how to use it safely. HCQ’s close relative Chloroquine was first used to treat Covid19 in China, quite successfully. HCQ was subsequently used in France and showed considerable efficacy against the disease.
Covid19 can be described as a two-stage disease. In the first stage, its symptoms are rather like those of a cold and hospitalization is usually not necessary. However, if the patient progresses to the second stage, pneumonia can set in along with other complications, the immune system can go haywire with what is called a cytokine storm, and the patient will need hospitalization. In the worst case, intensive care is needed, and possibly mechanical ventilation. During the worst part of the pandemic in New York, in March and April, about 90 percent of those who ended up on a ventilator died.
When HCQ is combined as part of a triple treatment, with zinc and azythromycin, patients usually are kept out of the hospital--they never get to the second stage. As you would expect, the reduction in deaths due to Covid19 is striking--we are not talking about a minor effect here. There is evidence that with widespread and appropriate treatment with the HCQ triple treatment, many lives could be saved, even to the point of making a vaccine for Covid19 unnecessary. And HCQ is cheap--a five day course of treatment with the drug costs less than $10. Contrast this with remdesivir, the drug Donald Trump is taking. Marketed by Gilead Pharmaceuticals, a course of treatment for Covid19 with remdesivir costs about $3,500. If the thought occurs to you that there would be an incentive for big Pharma companies to suppress HCQ so that they can market their new money-makers, you would be right. To quote Norman Doige again:
On May 1, the NIH’s COVID-19 Treatment Guidelines panel members allowed for the emergency use of remdesivir and started pulling away from HCQ, saying it could only be used in hospital or in studies. Investigative journalist Sharyl Attkisson looked into the financial links of the members of that group that was suddenly restricting HCQ and giving the edge to remdesivir. When she and her team examined the ties of those on the committee, she found that a large number had ties with Gilead, the company that makes remdesivir, which costs $3,500 for several days' worth, and was emerging as the chief rival to HCQ. It was not just a few members either: “We found that of 11 members reporting links to a drug company, nine of them named relationships to remdesivir’s maker Gilead. Seven more, including two of the committee’s leaders, have ties to Gilead beyond the 11 months they had to disclose. Two were on Gilead’s advisory board. Others were paid consultants or received research support and honoraria. Nobody reported ties to hydroxychloroquine, which is now made by numerous generic manufacturers and is so cheap, analysts say even a spike in sales would not be a financial driver for the companies.
In short, the top of the medical profession has been corrupted by big Pharma. Dr. Anthony Fauci himself has been part of this action, as he has been a booster of remdesivir while bad mouthing HCQ. And some of the most prestigious medical journals in the world have been drawn into the campaign to suppress HCQ, as Norman Doige so ably documents. Here is a link so you can read his article for yourself:
https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/science/articles/hydroxychloroquine-m...
Comments
No bleach?
I want to see him drink bleach!
On the serious side, thank you for this essay. Do you know what European Journals are saying?
I've seen lots of changes. What doesn't change is people. Same old hairless apes.
Hydroxychloroquine is an antagonist to Remdesivir
There is a very good reason that hydroxychloroquine is not being used to treat Trump.
(Source: Medscape)
There may have been a good reason that hydroxychloroquine was not the first choice, but once treatment began with Remdesivir, hydroxychloroquine and chloroquine would be ruled out as incompatible..
Capitalism is the extraordinary belief that the nastiest of men for the nastiest of motives will somehow work for the benefit of all."
- John Maynard Keynes
Too bad they are ignoring Ivermectin
US doctors are too arrogant and brainwashed by big pharma
Here's a couple of studies
https://www.mdpi.com/2073-4409/9/9/2100/htm
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S030028962030288X
India has dropped its HCQ recommendation in favor of ivermectin.
EDIT to add:
US COVID death rate 632.92/million
India's 72.95/million
https://www.statista.com/statistics/1104709/coronavirus-deaths-worldwide...
As Chris explains remdesiver isn't nearly as effective.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aSJRyYf01H8
Edit to add:
Just caught this as I was vacuuming this AM. Nice summary by a doctor of Trump's situation.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rko2xGmPn04 (14 min)
President Trump was flown to the hospital on Friday afternoon (October 2, 2020) after testing positive for COVID-19 on October 1. Roger Seheult, MD discusses the experimental drug Regeneron that Trump was given and the risk of severe symptoms or death given the President’s age and co-morbidities. Dr. Seheult also discusses a new article in the journal Nature about the key role of interferon in fighting SARS-CoV-2 and symptoms of COVID-19 (This video was recorded on October 2, 2020).
“Until justice rolls down like water and righteousness like a mighty stream.”
An American classic:
Glad to see the focus on treatment. Vaccines may or may not
ever work. But what is wrong with looking into everything that can be used as a prophylactic or infection and cytokine reducer? Treatments may be the best way to deal with an infection in the same family as the common cold, which we have never found a vaccine for.
Didier RAOULT the docteur/medicin in Marseilles who has been an advocate for HQC has taken a lot of heat from US CDC and others including the French version of US medical opinion. He actually believes and has treated and released results of using HQC and Zith + a few other things has kept sick or exposed people from becoming acute. Macron to his credit went down to Didier and visited with him to understand his work.
Quack or independent thinker. These days, so hard to tell.
Thank you for looking at treatments that may mitigate or lessen the effects of exposure and onset of disease. It may be the way out.
A society grows great when old men plant trees in whose shade they know they shall never sit. Allegedly Greek, but more possibly fairly modern quote.
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Scientists try really hard to be ethical and objective --
I read the entire original article in tablet, and found it well written and interesting. It certainly piqued my interest in HCQ. I then went out and looked for more studies on HCQ.
I found this. It's brand new, peer-reviewed, and with a reasonable sample size.
https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamainternalmedicine/fullarticle/2771265
It concluded the HCQ was of no benefit. At the end of the article, there are conflict of interest disclosures, including one scientist who recieved income from Gilead. Now the article subject of the OP implies that biomedical science has become corrupted by big pharma. I disagree, based on my own behavior and the other scientists I know.
I was retained by lawyers representing a company whose products were accused of helping houses burn down in a thunderstorm. The lawyers wanted me to do experiments and show that their client's product did not add to lightning fires risk. They were honest lawyers so they told me to actually figure it out and report what I found. I knew what they wanted me to find, and they paid me a lot of money. However, that's not what I found. My loyalty to them was that I was willing to help them fix their product but I had to tell them "Yes -- your product really DOES help houses burn down in a thunderstorms, and here's why".
Just because a scientist gets money from a drug company does not mean they will lie. In fact, the people who politicize science are politicians, not scientists.
If you want to see another example of scientists bending over backwards to be objective,
try reading the technical summary of any of the IPCC reports. They are dry as hell, and objective as hell also. It's only the commentary of others in the press that gets political or goes over the edge.
Do not let the plutocrats divide us!
It is the mind set...
of manufactured consent. Did the study you mention on HCQ include Zinc? If not it is a flawed study.
The green countries used HCQ, yellow did initially then stopped, and red countries did not use it. Death rate/million is the y axis.
Another example of big pharma brain washing is remdesiver which has very little efficacy compared to ivermectin. Now why would they ignore a potentially effective drug? It cost 30 cents a dose. Remdesiver is $3000+ / treatment.
India has dropped its HCQ recommendation in favor of ivermectin.
US COVID death rate 632.92/million
India's 72.95/million
I'm a scientist and spent several years in the research biz. But they have been brainwashed in the same way reporters have been.
Noam Chomsky about the way critical journalists are filtered out of from the mainstream media: "I don't say you're self-censoring. I'm sure you believe everything you're saying. But what I'm saying is that if you believed something different you wouldn't been sitting where you're sitting." (12 seconds)
[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1nBx-37c3c8]
The entire video is instructive...https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bUxJaDfnATU
“Until justice rolls down like water and righteousness like a mighty stream.”
Re: in the mind set
I am glad you are an honest, ethical scientist, and I am sure there are many others. That said, scientists in general are not exempt from the pressures of society, especially when they find themselves in high or lucrative positions. In the case of the medical profession, more than one editor of a major medical journal has commented that Big Pharma companies can influence what gets published in their journals, because those journals are dependent on advertising from those same companies.
Mentioned in my post here is the article published in The Lancet, one of the world's most prestigious medical journals, "what was hailed by some as a definitive study of 96,000 patients showing the drug [HCQ] was most certainly dangerous and ineffective, and indeed that it killed 30% more people than those who didn’t take it. Within days, that study was retracted, with the editor of one of the two most respected medical journals in the Western world conceding it was “a monumental fraud.”
It turned out that the database the study submitted to the Lancet was based on, did not actually exist. This was not found out by the Lancet's editors. Rather, outside doctors, reading the study, realized that it was totally implausible. After they wrote in and raised a ruckus, three of the four authors listed on the study withdrew their names. How could such a thing happen in one of the world's premier medical journals? It was not because the study authors or the editors of The Lancet were "bending over backwards to be objective", that's for sure. Malfeasance exists in all professions.
Incorrect in a significant way
The database you refer to did exist and the conclusions based on that database were correct. The problem was that the database was put together by a company called Surgisphere, and it was fraudulent. The fault of the researchers was they trusted a company that turned out to be dishonest. The fraudulent nature of the database was quickly revealed by the scientific community and the paper was retracted.
Semantics
Of what use is a database that is fraudulent? Either you have good data, or you don't. Just sayin'.