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Hard to say. Who do you treat? Even if the drugs “work” the people who arrive “turning blue” are decompensating quickly. There won’t be time to do a G6PD Def. Test so you risk killing a dying patient with the treatment. So “Urgent” patients are logistically never going to be realistically treated. Sure, you draw the blood and send it but by the time you get an answer many of them will be beyond help. If you’ve never seen it you perhaps can’t understand it but patients like that are “crashing”. Even if you could just blindly give it to them all it may not do much good at that point, which has been my objection all along.

The question becomes can the drugs prevent the rate at which seriously ill (requiring just Oxygen) become deathly ill. In those patients the drugs could (COULD) be of benefit. You have time to get the G6PD Def. This is where the drugs can help. I have been reading Dr Raoult’s paper. This is one of the questions they ask. For obvious reasons, the guy’s much smarter than I am after all.

> Hard to say. Who do you treat? Even if the drugs “work” the people who arrive “turning blue” are decompensating quickly.

Short answer- according to Dr. Zelenko’s regimen. Or according to any number of foreign countries already using a similar regimen. Are you referring to eye side effect problems, plus some kind of temporary dementia? Or something else? (Sorry, I do not have a background in medicine.)

> There won’t be time to do a G6PD Def. Test

OK but is one really needed? In an emergency situation? Is a potentially fatal pandemic enough of an emergency situation to justify prophylactic regimen? Is G6PD condition very selective and/or related to rare genetics? I have been prescribed this in the past on a prophylactic basis for travel to a malaria infested area (Ecuador), and never heard of that test... and I am still alive... so, can you please explain why I am still alive?

> so you risk killing a dying patient with the treatment.

What is the risk of that, specifically, given that death is inevitable?

> So “Urgent” patients are logistically never going to be realistically treated.

Dr. Zelenko IIRC mentions that it probably won’t work with advanced cases... if so, then so what? Personally were I an MD I might consider another experimental alternative such as Remdesivir if experimental evidence supports such treatment, or else nothing.

> Sure, you draw the blood and send it but by the time you get an answer many of them will be beyond help.

OK. However, isn’t there the AVID 15 minute test coming online shortly that the President mentioned in yesterday’s COVID-19 briefing? And there are IIRC other relatively quick turnaround tests available now? So, now (or very shortly) won’t this be just some kind of a red herring argument?

> If you’ve never seen it you perhaps can’t understand it but patients like that are “crashing”. Even if you could just blindly give it to them all it may not do much good at that point, which has been my objection all along.

Please see my earlier remarks on Dr. Zelenko’s experimental treatment above. IIRC he states that his recommended regimen has no effect for patients beyond a certain point, where lung damage has considerably progressed.

Thanks for your questions.

Thanks wastoute for your work.
You have been awesome on FR this weekend!
I am trying to be self-satisfied that I knew what you were going to say when you read Raoult, et al. In other words, I am getting a handle on your perspective and learning better what are the important questions to ask and how to get them answered.

I am disappointed by the result but not devastated. I wanted this to be something... (sigh).

You mentioned somewhere (can’t quote you but this is how I remember it,) how in order to bring these people back from the brink, the compound/drug must have dramatic and drastic properties in vitro or it is not going to do that in vivo.

Your clinical experience is sound and people should listen to you or at least those who are still in it daily, because I say without fear of contradiction, that a novel virus is NOT going to upend the entire science of virology or epidemiology!