Not ashamed to show my ignorance.
My first question is are they right in using a qualitative and not a quantitative PCR kit? (Is there a quantitative kit for SARS-CoV-2?) I did not think anybody was claiming the virus would completely disappear in such very ill patients after 5 or 6 days of HCQ/Azy. Raoult was claiming only “clinical improvement.” People do get better on their own. Did the HCQ actually do it? He addressed this, somewhat unconvincingly I admit, in the March 28 report of the 80 patients by comparing the improvement of his 80 patients with 195 Wuhan patients. I looked up the RealStar SARS-CoV-2 RT-PCR kit and I really cannot understand why this would be the appropriate way to evaluate the effectiveness of this drug regimen. It is just shows the virus is present. Please correct me. It would truly be a miracle drug if it destroyed the virus completely in only five days in every patient.
I don’t have a problem with stacking the test with really bad cases. We want to save those too.
I wondered at the blood concentration (day 7 at 891ng/mL?) but I don’t know enough to see a problem there.
The last paragraph I find to be disingenuous as Raoult was very clear that those patients were not receiving Azithromycin.
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OK I went back and read Gautret et al. from 17 March 2020 and he says he is using the same PCR test and that all six who received both HCQ and Azi were “virologically cured” at day six, and that one patient who had only received the HCQ was cleared next day when Azi was added! The second paper with 80 patients was the one with “clinical improvement.” The blurbs while claiming to be interested in virologic and clinical outcomes did not include information on clinical outcomes.
Ready for yours if you would kindly. And I am out after your final. Thanks.
I’m kind of in the same boat as you, I think. I understand some of what’s going on, but I don’t have enough of a background in this to keep me from having to try to educate myself every step of the way.
One thing i have wondered about is if azithromycin alone has been tried and what kind of results have been seen with that. I’m beginning to have doubts about the zinc theory and am beginning to think it may be an additive effect of two drugs that have chloroqine’s pH altering property affecting organelles related to the immune system. Maybe zinc is still part of it. Or maybe the drugs are just giving the patients time for their immune systems to kick in by relieving symptoms. One caveat, I may be full of crap.
Just a small addition to my previous post. Dr. Truong uses much smaller dosage of zinc in comparison to Dr. Zelenko or what’s in Dr. Marik’s protocol. Maybe it’s important for the patient not be zinc deficient but large amounts of zinc not needed.