"There is no miracle drug"
I guess Dr. Falsie never had occasion to encounter this magic minty medication...
Posted on 03/20/2020 12:16:09 PM PDT by SeekAndFind
Dr Anthony Fauci has rebuked Donald Trump's claim that anti-malaria drug chloroquine could be a game-changer in the fight against COVID-19.
Dr Facui, who is a member of the White House Coronavirus Task Force, made the claim during an interview with Anderson Cooper on CNN Thursday evening.
'There's no magic drug for coronavirus right now,' the top doctor told Cooper.
Earlier in the day, Trump told media that there had been positive results after doctors trialled chloroquine on COVID-19 patients, and suggested the drug could be a game-changer.
'It's shown very, very encouraging early results. We're going to be able to make that drug available almost immediately. It's been approved,' he said.
However, Dr Fauci said on CNN just a few hours later: 'Let me put it into perspective for the viewers .. there has been anecdotal non-proven data that it [chloroquine] works... but when you have an uncontrolled trial you can never definitely say that it works'.
He repeated his caution on Friday in an interview with Today, saying: 'Even though the information is anecdotal that they may work, we need to prove it so people would get the right drug that's safe and effective.
'What we're saying is these are drugs that have some suggestion that they may work,' he went on, but that controlled trials needed to be done to prove that they are effective.
The University of Minnesota is looking for people who have been in contact with a known positive case of COVID-19 to volunteer for a trial to test Hydroxychloroquine and see if it is effective in preventing people from catching the virus.
They need 1,500 people to take part in the trial and so far have 150.
(Excerpt) Read more at dailymail.co.uk ...
“Terrible comment.”
Very necessary unfortunately. He is part of this chem/bio terrorism/DS event. If you make your bed with traitors you must suffer the consequences.
Jeezus. I watched the press conference, and this conflict was totally made up. Fauci took a scientific view of waiting for the data, Trump took a comforting view of encouragement. Even Fauci himself admitted they weren’t apart on this.
The media is disgustingly criminal.
I think you missed the point. The media can’t have it both ways.
THIS. Also, I haven’t checked all of Trump’s press conferences, but didn’t one of the most recent ones deal with FDA changes to allow for faster approval in times of epidemics. Trump’s doing, no doubt.
Yeah, Trump has talked about several aspects from the “Right to try” legislation that he passed, to removing a lot of the red tape and bureaucratic challenges to moving solutions forward.
Proven for him is a double blind study where they deliberately withhold a possible cure from dying patients in order to prove that the ones that got real treatment are still alive because of the real medicine vs placebo.
In my estimation a double study is nothing more than cruel and inhuman treatment of real patients who are dying. Treat them anyway if hey live then maybe you have a real cure, if they don't live then keep looking. The fact that they don't die should be proof enough.
They already have the right to use the drug. Any drug that has been FDA approved for use can then be prescribed by physicians for any other purpose. In fact some cures have been discovered exactly that way.
A Freeper supplied a link so I read through the paper.
You are correct that inclusion of azithromycin seemed to make a dramatic difference.
A few comments:
The authors of the paper noted that the experiment was not completely randomized. The control group came from places other than the treated group.
Also, six patients in the treated group, I think, were dropped after the trial began. Three of those went to an ICU.
The report that "100%" were cured evidently represents the six patients who received both the hydroxychloroquine and the azithromycin. Those with only the hydroxychloroquine did not recover as quickly as six days after "inclusion" which I assume means inclusion in the trial.
Probability values are provided in Table 3 in the paper. I'm no expert in calculating these values for controlled experiments. I believe they indicate the probability that the observed differences only occurred by chance. If p is 0.002 then that would indicate that only 2 times out of a thousand trials would one expect that the difference noted was the result of chance.
What's important to realize is that the low p value does not indicate that repetition of the study would show the same impressive results. Also, repeating the study with the same limited sample size won't necesarily give us a better understanding of how good the treatment might be.
Another way to look at the significance of such a study is to recognize that we have thousands of drugs on the market. If every study had a p value of 0.002, then that means one study out of every 500 would be incorrect. If we have 10,000 drugs on the market, then we would risk having 20 drugs that might have no benefit whatever, despite having a small study supporting them.
As long as they don’t commit until there is certainty, they can, and can get away with it.
It’s got nothing to do with certainty. If the media accepts Newsom’s “could” then derides Trunp’s “could” they are showing themselves to be biased. Period.
Me thinks you’re right.
Remember, the media is spinning what the doctor said.
“This could probably fall under that criteria.”
unnecessary: all drugs already approved by the FDA can be legally and ethically prescribed off-label by any physician for pretty much any medical purpose without prior approval by anyone ...
I've heard of many studies that have been halted because the early data indicated clearly that the control group would suffer unduly for lack of the treatment.
My understanding is that the designers of the study typically decide as part of the initiation of the study what criteria would be used to cut the study short.
My wife was interviewed recently for inclusion in a cancer treatment study. The study would have consisted of adding a single drug to what was otherwise the standard treatment. Some of the control group were going to die. Some of the treated group were, no doubt, going to die.
Optimizing treatment when the difference between good treatment and better treatment is small requires discipline and sacrifice on the part of the doctors and the patients.
Twenty years ago people would have considered a "cure" for cancer to be a miracle. I heard a statistic recently that the survival rates for cancer had improved by 29% in the last twenty years. In effect, we have been the beneficiaries of one-third of a miracle in the last two decades. I'm one of the survivors and I appreciate the incredibly expensive drug that has contributed to this mini-miracle.
I listened to the entire thing. Dr.Fauci is just being a typical cautious medical expert. He is afraid that they will start treating sick people with this drug without knowing if it is effective while ignoring other treatments.
He’s way too entrenched in the old NIH/FDA/CDC/pharmaceutical way of doing things. Until we’ve spent years testing it on mice, then monkeys, then - maybe - humans, or a pharmaceutical company pays us a shitload of money, it’s not an effective treatment. Even then, we end up with side effects that lead to the prescription of other pharmaceuticals. If hydroxychloroquine works in some cases and saves a few lives, then why not use it and continue research into finding something even more effective?
I guess Dr. Falsie never had occasion to encounter this magic minty medication...
Yes you are indeed correct!
My mistake! You are correct!
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