This EDITORIAL came out dated today. It seems like a pretty fair commentary on how much information is coming out on "the virus." It will be hard to sort through.
When statistics are used to try to separate the wheat from the chaff, some of the chaff still falls in the pile with with the wheat. 5% or 1% or whatever cutoff is used. In 1000 studies there could easily be 10 to 50 that are wrong by dumb luck. (Though not all of the studies coming our are on treatments.)
When a study of a treatment show a benefit on a serious problem, an "NNT" (number needed to treat) of something like 5 to 10 is often considered very good. As they mention in the editorial though, most people would not consider a medicine to be very good if you have to treat 10 people in order to prevent one bad outcome, but that's usually considered a good drug if it is affordable and does not hurt you often.
I am just posting because so many here are reading rather technical things and it seemed like pretty a pretty clear essay on the topic of absorbing all the information coming out.
I do not like to "post and run" but a lot of the time I have to. Apologies that I probably will not comment a lot if this generates much discussion, but I hope it helps those of you learning to digest medical literature.
I would point out that randomized clinical tests while people are dying is as stupid as it gets
Throw all known non harmful treatments you can think of at it
SARS victims responded well to hydroxychloroquine plus Z Pak and zinc
Keep using it
Thanks for posting this succinct commentary. I nails home the challenges that will come with the interpreting of the current clinical trials. COVID-19 is a complex disease with different phases in its pathophysiology. Successful therapeutic intervention will depend on many factors, for example, dosing, timing, co-administered drugs and the comorbidities of the patient. Consequently, we’re going to get a firehose of data that sometimes will be contradictory.