Posted on 04/21/2020 7:32:16 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
Hydroxychloroquine is being tested around the world to see if it can be used as a treatment for the coronavirus pandemic. As the debate intensifies on whether or not it works, 25 percent of physicians around the world believe health care workers should take the drug to prevent COVID-19 infections, according to a new survey.
The survey, conducted by Sermo, a health care data collection company, found that one-quarter (5,158) of more than 20,000 physicians around the world believe the anti-malarial drug should be used to prevent infections. Separately, 50 percent of the physicians surveyed have used the anti-malarial drug in professional settings since March 25.
“Despite the superstorm of controversy surrounding hydroxychloroquine, it still remains the leading treatment option for severe patients and is even being used in milder cases and patients who are simply suspected of COVID," an anonymous emergency medicine physician on Sermo said in the release obtained by Fox News. "At this stage with so little evidence, doctors have very limited options.”
The survey also found that hydroxychloroquine, which has been used to treat malaria since the 1950s, was used by 22 percent (1,443 instances) of physicians prophylactically by the first week of April.
Some 277 uses were in high-risk patients, including first-responders, and 100 uses were used in low-risk patients.
The findings from the study found that the drug was also used in undiagnosed cases.
Currently, there is no known scientific cure for the disease known as COVID-19 and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has cited concerns about hydroxychloroquine as a treatment, including cardiotoxicity, especially with patients who have underlying health issues.
The Food and Drug Administration recently announced an emergency use authorization to try several drugs, including hydroxychloroquine and chloroquine, despite a lack of clear evidence of their effectiveness.
(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...
RE: Do a computer database search for ALL people on Plaquenil prior to the epidemic
Why is PRIOR to the epidemic useful? Prior to the epidemic, no one was being treated for Covid-19.
RE: You trust me to tell you what a Retrospective Yoked Control Study is?
Would trying to replicate the actual hundreds of cases made by Dr. Zelenko count?
You asked if I read it. I did. I also read a critique by Raoult’s peers. Their criticisms of his work are theirs, not mine.
RE: You asked if I read it. I did. I also read a critique by Raoult’s peers. Their criticisms of his work are theirs, not mine.
Since I cannot directly talk to them, I have YOU as my partner in discussion. So, tell me, what is your objection to Dr. Raoult’s study?
This will be useful for everyone who visits this thread.
Since you are trying to convince everyone that using the HCQ combo is a waste of time, effort and money,maybe you can tell us WHY Dr. Didier Raoult’s study is not acceptable.
You wouldn’t have to recreate them, they are there. There are thousands of people who have had the disease and MANY of them have not taken his treatment. I’m fairly certain all their data is in a database somewhere. Just pair every patient he treated with one as similar as you can. Then hit “Enter” and the answer falls out.
It is only THE MEDIA that thinks this is ‘controversial’
How about this:
Almost 789,000 cased of Covid-19 have been identified in the U.S. Of those 73,533 have recovered fully and 42,458 have died. Of the 74,000 who recovered how many were given hydroxychloroquine as part of their treatment and how many were not? Of the 42,500 who died how many were given hydroxychloroquine and died anyway?
We can factor their prior conditions in in the study.
RE: There are thousands of people who have had the disease and MANY of them have not taken his treatment.
Sure, and many of them have gotten well EVEN without using HCQ. I know of a few who did. I never denied that. But most of these people I know who did not use HCQ because they were not available for them took at least 3 weeks to get better.
The question is this -— How LONG did it take for them to get well compared to those on the HCQ Drug combo? It has been claimed that those on the drug combo got better within 5 to 6 days on average.
Perfect! Now you are getting it. The “Natural Course” of the disease can be known by the data we have. Sure, it is confounded minimally by the people who WERE treated by the proposed treatment and we can’t know that but with three quarters of a million people who have had the disease i think its pretty safe to say not enough of them are in the data set to terribly bias it.
So there you have it! A group of people who can inform us about what the course of the disease is.
More...
So now we have a data set that is HUGE. We can just boil it down and accept that, compare the CFRs for the two groups. Or we can get more elaborate and produce even more convincing evidence by yoking controls. But how ever you want to do it we have plenty of data. You and I don’t have access to this data but even more data is available. As you mention, the course of the disease. Sophisticated Statistical Analysis could even tell us if there is an INTERACTION between groups.
Say we find out there isn’t ONE treatment protocol but several. The math gets a little difficult but, hey, we’re using computers anyway, right? So we could, with that data determine not only IF the drugs were successful but WHAT DOSE was best?
See how this works?
RE:So there you have it! A group of people who can inform us about what the course of the disease is.
And if HCQ was administered to a significant number of these people who got better, then it is NOT a useless treatment after all !
Assuming this is so, and we have scores of evidence that this is so, why call it useless?
I don’t think there is anyone in FReeper land telling us that we should FORCE everyone to be on the HCQ combo.
We can use your suspected treatment if that’s the doctor’s personal wish.
But why ( like what the governor is doing in Michigan or what Cuomo did partially in NY ) RESTRICT the usage of HCQ combo under penalty of the law?
How would you feel if I passed a law restricting or banning YOUR preferred protocol?
Regarding the French hospital site, can you translate and interpret the following:
1. The heading for the 91k tests: Is it total tests the hospital has given?
2. The heading for the 36k tests: Is that total patients tested?
3. The heading for the 4.5k tests: Is that total patients with Covid-19?
And then, do you know if the 3000 treated with HCQ/zithro and the 12 deaths are included in the total hospital numbers? If so, that would mean they’re treating 65.5% of their Covid patients with HCQ and getting only 12% of the deaths. And it would also mean that only 12/2999 = 0.4% are dying of the treated patients whereas 88/(4579-2999) = 88/1580 = 5.6% of the untreated are dying. But I don’t know if the 4,579 includes the 2,999?
Comparing the two numbers isn’t quite fair though, because some patients are probably in such bad shape on arrival that they can’t get 3 days of the drug combo into them. And then you also don’t know the final outcome of the 2,999 patients yet. They need to start posting some recovery numbers too for this to have much meaning.
EDIT TO ADD — and here’s my point — we should not, like the mainstream media, simply ridicule or trash HCQ Combo as useless or unproven compared to what other protocols there are.
NOT WHEN THERE ARE MANY DOCTORS ( REPUTABLE ONES ) OUT THERE WHO HAVE USED IT AND SWEAR TO ITS EFFECTIVENESS.
“Not those who simply complain and say it does not work without even bothering to try it.”
Doctors do not simply try things like that. Quacks do.
Sorry, Yoked COntrols. I went into that a little bit above but it may help to review here. A yoked control is NOT a randomly selected player. You have to search for a “best fit” among those who are as similar as possible in every way except the treatment. And “looking to see how they turned out” is cheating. What the outcome was or complications were obviously cannot be one of the parameters for which these “yoked controls” are selected. They can ONLY be selected for being as similar as possible in every way to the specific experimental patient to whom they are yoked.
In this way as many sources of bias as possible are eliminated. The study is not prospective, of course, but we have accounted for and eliminated every possible source of bias. So this kind of study can be every bit as powerful as an RCT and it is done all the time. Especially in cases like this where we need an answer now not in 6 months.
Sorry, I’m with you up to a point. But when I see people doing things that were considered unethical not long ago and actually illegal when I was in Med School (and we ALL knew better back then) I kind of DO feel “justified” in pointing it out. You may not like the way I do it but my criticism of how this was done is VERY valid.
“WHAT KIND OF STUDY WOULD YOU HAVE PERFORMED TO YOUR SATISFACTION?”
For one thing, if the study found patients actually died at a higher rate, would you be the first to proclaim, “Dammit! They should have studied this before killing people!” People can be complete hypocrites and liars.
That question is why doctors do not listen to patients as much, because patients will demand one thing then hold the doctor accountable if the patient’s guess is wrong. Doctors are supposed to know better.
RE: Doctors do not simply try things like that. Quacks do.
These doctors did not invent the use of HCQ combo out of thin air. They read the studies done on other places ( e.g. China,South Korea,France) and tried to replicate them.
And seeing how the replications have found successes, they report it and when polled, they simply respond according to their experience.
So as I said, you have to INCLUDE those who have actually used it, not based on some “trying things for the heck of it”, but based on what they have read and seen retrospectively in other cases.
Dr. Zelenko for instance, did not invent his protocol. He based it on the successful cases done in the past.
RE: For one thing, if the study found patients actually died at a higher rate, would you be the first to proclaim, “Dammit! They should have studied this before killing people!” People can be complete hypocrites and liars.
Well, what about the actual hundreds of cases of Dr. Zelenko? why are these unsatisfactory?
He did?? Where did you read that?
In an interview with Forward, Zelenko “acknowledged that his regimen was new and untested, and that it was too soon to assess its long-term effectiveness.”
As has been noted elsewhere, combining hydroxychloroquine and azithromycin can cause serious problems for people with certain heart conditions. Though zinc appears to be an important factor in several immune functions, a potential mechanism for how it might work against viral infections is not well-understood.
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