Posted on 04/08/2020 6:19:40 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
Controversy swirls around whether hydroxychloroquine and azithromycin ("H&A") should be used to treat people who have the Wuhan virus. Setting aside for now all the qualifications that for good reason are used whenever discussing the question (qualifications like "after consultation between the patient and the doctor" and "administered according to a well established protocol"), the core issue is whether or not to use a treatment that has shown positive results for some and has not shown obviously negative results for any.
Given the standard medical diktat that the first obligation of a health care worker is to do no harm, there is a case to be made that H&A treatment should be withheld until properly designed clinical trials have established to a high level of certainty that the treatment has a significantly more positive effect on patient health than it does negative. There are, however, two good reasons to challenge this well established approach in our current circumstance.
The first reason is that the current circumstances are abnormal. Virtually everybody understands this, so there is no need to discuss it in detail. Suffice it to say that the widespread suspension of people's rights to move about freely has already established the unusual nature of the world in a pandemic. If things are bad enough to justify keeping people homebound, they are bad enough to bend the rules regarding use of medicine.
The second reason — less often discussed — is that the right to live our lives as we wish ought to be sufficient justification for overruling the historically well established medical directive that the caregiver should do no harm. As positive and humane as that medical directive has been over the ages, it has also accrued power and authority into the hands of the professional caregiver.
(Excerpt) Read more at americanthinker.com ...
MAINSTREAM MEDIA LIKES TO USE THE WORD “ANECDOTAL” ( DR. FAUCI USES THE WORD TOO ).
A nasty problem exists here: the word “anecdotal” carries a negative connotation. It implies that people recovering from the Wuhan virus with unexpected frequency after having received H&A treatment is mere perception and is, therefore, not science. This is wrong. Anecdotal evidence is not hearsay evidence; it is evidence from direct observation. Anecdotal evidence compiled by somebody with an agenda other than saving lives might be readily dismissed, but doctors who are in the business of treating Wuhan virus patients are motivated to find what works best.
The French doctor Didier Raoult has conducted a small-scale experiment using the H&A treatment, the results of which suggest that it is effective. Without doubt, the study was not controlled to the degree generally expected when trying to establish the efficacy of a new drug, but this was inevitable, since Dr. Raoult’s primary concern was for his patients rather than research. Does this mean that his study is flawed? Yes, but all studies are. Does it mean that his study is so flawed that it should be ignored entirely? No, not unless someone presents a reasonably strong case as to why his work should be dismissed.
After all, even the studies performed by professional researchers trying to establish the efficacy of some new medicine are inevitably flawed. They are flawed because they have to rely on sampling procedures and inferential statistical tests. Any honest scientist will readily admit that selecting a perfectly representative sample from a population is impossible because there is no way of knowing what attributes, and how many of them, must be perfectly represented in the sample taken from the larger population.
All we are saying......
“Given the standard medical diktat that the first obligation of a health care worker is to do no harm”
In this case, failing to do may do more harm. It’s a simple bit of logic that Trump repeats over and over again, and some refuse to grasp.
Thank God that Trump is out front on this.
Look at a UK comparison:
Bureaucrats, Inertia and Desuetude
by Seneca III
“In human affairs there is no certain truth and all our knowledge is but a woven web of guesses.”
— Xenophanes
The inbred inertia of the pedantic British Civil Service, including its Medical Mandarins, is disheartening in the extreme. Their insistence that the use of hydroxychloroquine and zinc is forbidden until normal, peacetime, snail-paced regulatory testing has been carried out reminds me of the attitude of our senior officers at the outbreak of WWl.
They refused to accept — or simply did not understand — that the conduct of war had changed since their last outings in the Zulu and Boer wars, and that with the advent and widespread use of highly efficient, belt-fed, water cooled machine guns, cavalry charges or the slowly advancing thin red line of old were no longer a viable strategy.
In this case history is repeating itself, albeit in a different way in a different theatre of war. As in 1914 onwards it is the troops and the junior officers who lead them into battle and the people they are defending who will pay the price resultant from this institutionalized inertia and lack of critical thinking… thus this current demonstration of an innate inability to swift-footedly change standard practices as circumstances change; they seem to not understand that these are very dangerous times indeed.
Essentially, we are at the beginning of a different war and on a different front. Even if this particular treatment turns out not to work, little or nothing will be lost and the search for a viable form of counterattack will continue unabated.
There are times, and this is one, when career self-serving risk-aversion is dangerously counterproductive, so start field testing now. There will be no shortage of willing volunteers who have nothing to lose either way, and perhaps a life to gain.
— Seneca III, in sunny, quiet part of Middle England this 7th day of April in the Year Zero.
https://gatesofvienna.net/2020/04/bureaucrats-inertia-and-desuetude/
This drug is being used. I don’t know where all the hype that no one uses it comes from.
Given the standard medical diktat that the first obligation of a health care worker is to do no harm
***********
The bureaucrats are more concered with potential harm to the parochial interests of their own agencies and departments. Everything in government is all about power, money and control.
Move those 29 million doses into the hot spots and outward from there. WTF do we have to lose?
The mainstream media would rather have people die than admit that their hated Trump was right.
But the drug cocktail and others are being used. And more of it is being released from the stockpile to be used all over they place. This article is like that IGs report on testing. It’s taking information from a few weeks ago and making it sound like it is happening today.
You’ve hit the nail on the head.
WTF!!!!??? ‘Rigorous scientific studies’ got us here !!!
Where were THEY in November 2019?
I say give it a chance:
proposefully infect the press corps with the Chinese flu and pick some underlings at the capitol to be infected.
Withhold the Hydroxy from the Press Corps and le5t’s see what happens.
Intern to supervising doctor: “Unfortunately, the patient in room 201 died this morning.”
Doctor: “No! You can’t say that! That’s just anecdotal.”
Intern: “No sir, he has no heartbeat....”
Doctor: [interrupting] “No, we can’t say that yet! It’s just anecdotal at this point. There have been no double-blind, placebo controlled studies yet.”
Intern: [confused] “what do I tell the family then??”
Doctor: “Simply, that anecdotally speaking, their father may have died, but we need to test that theory in a study. If it’s confirmed, we can sign a death certificate by the end of next year.”
“Oh, and get their permission to enroll their father in the study, since he is unable to consent on his own at this point.”
Intern: “... because he died??”
Doctor: “YOU CANT SAY THAT!! IT’S ANECDOTAL!!!!
People are assuming that if someone dies from Covid, then Hydroxychloroquine was not used. And fatalities rates are still pretty high. Parts of Europe are seeing 10+% fatality rates
“The inbred inertia of the pedantic British Civil Service, including its Medical Mandarins, is disheartening in the extreme.”
Dittos on the behavior of US Medical Mandarins, who are supported & cheered on by the despicable “Orange Man Bad” press corps.
“We won’t know if he is dead until after the autopsy.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1TJdjhd_XG8
EXCELLENT NEWS: Hydroxychloroquine Treatment Effective on 699 Patients
Dr. Zelenko says a course of treatment costs about $20.
Here is his program.
“As of today my team has tested approximately 200 people from this community for Covid-19, and 65% of the results have been positive. If extrapolated to the entire community, that means more than 20,000 people are infected at the present time. Of this group, I estimate that there are 1500 patients who are in the high-risk category (i.e. >60, immunocompromised, comorbidities, etc).
Given the urgency of the situation, I developed the following treatment protocol in the pre-hospital setting and have seen only positive results:
1. Any patient with shortness of breath regardless of age is treated.
2. Any patient in the high-risk category even with just mild symptoms is treated.
3. Young, healthy and low risk patients even with symptoms are not treated (unless their circumstances change and they fall into category 1 or 2).
My out-patient treatment regimen is as follows:
1. Hydroxychloroquine 200mg twice a day for 5 days
2. Azithromycin 500mg once a day for 5 days
3. Zinc sulfate 220mg once a day for 5 days “
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