Posted on 04/18/2020 7:01:08 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
Can I not have one g-ddamned day of hope?
Just one day. In the middle of an endless waking nightmare.
Jeremy Faust is the doctor in Boston who wrote a couple of pieces early in the epidemic for Slate, arguing (presciently) that the true fatality rate for COVID-19 was probably far below the three-percent figure gleaned from China’s Wuhan data. If it were really that high, he reasoned, we would have seen more dead on the Diamond Princess cruise after a huge number of passengers became infected. He’s been commenting sporadically on Twitter since then and noticed the enthusiasm over yesterday’s exciting partial data about Gilead’s experimental antiviral, remdesivir.
Mullane, while encouraged by the University of Chicago data, made clear her own hesitancy about drawing too many conclusions.
“It’s always hard,” she said, because the severe trial doesn’t include a placebo group for comparison. “But certainly when we start [the] drug, we see fever curves falling,” she said. “Fever is now not a requirement for people to go on trial, we do see when patients do come in with high fevers, they do [reduce] quite quickly. We have seen people come off ventilators a day after starting therapy. So, in that realm, overall our patients have done very well.”
She added: “Most of our patients are severe and most of them are leaving at six days, so that tells us duration of therapy doesn’t have to be 10 days. We have very few that went out to 10 days, maybe three,” she said.
The placebo study involves using a control group, which is given a pill that looks exactly like Remdesivir, but is made of something inert -- what used to be called "sugar pills." It's one of the last steps before the FDA approves a drug.
With only two fatalities in treating 226 people with severe symptoms, this could be, if not a miracle drug, then certainly a major breakthrough in treating COVID-19. It's likely we'll see more results from other trials in the near future, at which time we'll have a better idea of the true potential of this drug.
TOTALLY, ANECDOTAL.
Has Fauci been silent on this VERY EXPENSIVE alternative which requires hospitalization for 10 days or more.
Ok so, remdesivir, masks itself as adenosine, so as to interrupt the coronavirus’ own near-perfect genetic repair machine. Kind of like gluing down the “A” key on the keyboard.
In most cases, it fools COVID-19’s proofreading & repair mechanism. My only concern is that in someone soon enough, COVID-19 mutation will overcome remdesivir’a adenosine spoofing, and then there will be a RNA chain-terminator-resistant version of COVID-19. That would likely acquire after herd immunity, though, so less of an immediate threat but still a threat.
Whereas, Prof. Raoult’s protocol of Plaquenil + Azithromycin is likely to still be effective against a mutated COVID-19, but there’s no money in it.
RE: Whereas, Prof. Raoult’s protocol of Plaquenil + Azithromycin is likely to still be effective against a mutated COVID-19, but there’s no money in it.
Makes me wonder What if Zinc were added to Dr. Raoult’s protocol (as per Dr. Zelenko) ? Would the results be even better?
He has a point. All good scientific investigation some kind of negative control so you don’t fool yourself into thinking you’ve found something.
That said...
We’re not exactly in a position to do good science right now, especially when we still have people dying. IMHO, ethics dictates doing anything and everything that could help, unless the treatment you’re proposing harms the patient.
When politics overrule science and the public good. I have lost count of the number success stories but it will always be anecdotal.
HCQ + Z-Pac = $
Remdesivir = $$$$$$$$$$$$$
Isn’t the whole point of the medications to not allow patients to get to “critical” in the first place? I get it. People with 17 failing organs probably won’t respond as well to a pill or IV.
The one thing I’ve been concluding from these studies is that the critical patients should have had access to the meds way sooner.
Then there are the supply and cost variables.
There are areas of the world wherein hydroxychloroquine is no longer the preferred preventative medication for malaria due to strains of malaria becoming resistant. But, we’re talking decades of use here, not like a virus rapidly mutating. Covid-19 is a virus, however. It remains to be seen whether or not it can become resistant to hydroxychloroquine.
Remdesivir also requires hospitalization...for 15 days.
The question is, would a control group have been condemned to potentially die in order to facilitate a full, proper test run?
absolutely agree
What do doctors know? Idiots. We can read the Internet! We know everything they know and we know what’s best!
Idiocracy, “Cause it’s got electrolytes!”
What you never know about these studies is how many other trials didn’t come out as well and weren’t reported out.
RE: What you never know about these studies is how many other trials didn’t come out as well and weren’t reported out.
That would be dishonest. Regardless of how they turned out, they should report their studies so that we can all review their patient conditions, methodologies, drugs applied and results, etc.
That’s the only way we can determine the validity of their results.
Hiding the result would be like China trying to cover up the origins of the novel Coronavirus.
Fauci, Birx and Redfield have already been caught with even worse misconduct, tied to their significant conflicts of interest.
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