Posted on 04/10/2020 10:54:51 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
The drug doesn't come without a certain set of risks, and no one knows if it can effectively treat COVID-19.
The president and some of his close advisors — desperate for a COVID-19 cure — are asking “What do you have to lose?” by taking hydroxychloroquine (HCQ), a strong medication never adequately tested for efficacy or safety in COVID-19 patients. The correct answer to the president’s question, which he doesn’t seem to want to hear, is that we have our lives to lose.
The president acknowledges “I’m not a doctor” but this raises the question “What do doctors know about the drug recommended by the president?" Most doctors are aware that HCQ can be effective for patients with malaria, arthritis or lupus. If they were to follow the president’s suggestion and prescribe it for COVID-19 patients, they would also like to know that it will benefit some of those patients, at least.
This drug hasn't proven to be successful in treating viral illnesses
What is known? HCQ has been tested previously in several viral illnesses but never found effective. Importantly, there is no evidence whatsoever that HCQ can prevent COVID-19, and there is only anecdotal evidence that it improves the course of the disease. The reports that it can reduce the measurable levels of the virus in patients are seriously flawed, lack a valid control group and were released to the public with little, if any, scientific review. Proper clinical trials with HCQ are underway, but these will take months. In summary, doctors do not know if HCQ or any other drug now being tested is effective or will have any medical benefit.
Without any assurance of benefit, what do you have to lose? Most doctors rely on the FDA-approved label to evaluate the “risk” side of the benefit/risk equation for each presciption. The drug label for HCQ, and its close relative Chloroquine, are very clear about their risks and both contain a page and a half of stark warnings that include the possibility of blindness due to retinal injury, loss of consciousness due to low blood sugar, suicidal behavior, heart failure, potentially lethal interactions with other drugs, lethal heart rhythm disturbances and yes, death. When doctors prescribe HCQ, they expect that the risk of these potentially tragic side effects will be outweighed by some benefit.
Doctors are also trained to use their medical skills to evaluate the patient’s overall condition as part of the risk/benefit equation for a drug and to take appropriate measures to mitigate any risks. They know that some patients are at greater risk of developing side effects than others. Unfortunately, the patients at greatest risk for most of HCQ’s serious side effects are the same as the very sickest COVID-19 patients, e.g. those on respirators with low blood oxygen levels and with disturbances in body chemistry.
Continuous ECG monitoring is one of the methods used to prevent potentially lethal cardiac effects of HCQ and chloroquine. In many ICUs, computerized decision support systems monitor the patient’s electronic chart and send advisories to physicians when a drug’s risk exceeds safe thresholds. However, these surveillance tools are not generally available outside of the hospital and could not protect those who might try to prevent COVID-19 by taking HCQ.
Special exceptions are made for emergencies
Pandemics and other public health tragedies alter the usual norms and requirements of medical practice. When a life is in danger, physicians may decide to prescribe an unproven drug and monitor the patient for any potentially serious side effects. To enable such use, the FDA has “approved” the careful use of HCQ under an Emergency Use Authorization (EUA). It should be emphasized that the FDA did not approve HCQ as either safe or effective to treat or prevent COVID-19. Recognizing the unique situation doctors are facing, the FDA’s emergency authorization is for the “unapproved use of hydroxychloroquine” supplied from the nation’s stockpile but only for hospitalized adults and adolescents “for whom a clinical trial is not available, or participation is not feasible”.
The FDA’s EUA Fact Sheet should be carefully read by anyone contemplating prescribing or taking HCQ. Also, the public should know that the FDA is working hard to correct a problem at some public websites that post drug labels. Labels for 15 of the 49 products containing HCQ are out of date and do not contain the warnings found in the currently approved HCQ label or in the FDA’s Fact sheet.
In this crisis, our political leaders are grasping at straws and encouraging hope. When faced with a national medical crisis such as a pandemic, I encourage our leaders to defer to the medical and scientific experts who have the knowledge, skills and training to save lives and to not encourage unnecessary or unfounded risks with our lives and our safety.
Dr. Raymond L. Woosley is a professor of medicine at The University of Arizona, College of Medicine-Phoenix. He is the president of the Arizona Center for Education and Research on Therapeutics.
Someone died from putting too much Bengay on her legs - she was a runner with shin splints. Bengay has Silacylic acid AKA aspirin in it.
No. Military members were given clroquine.
Don't doctors and politicians and CEOs and their wives and concubines go to restaurants?
It's as if they are deliberately steering the Titanic into an iceberg out of spite because they would rather clambor onto a lifeboat or die in the icy waters than to continue merrily to their destination aboard the well appointed luxury liner. I just don't get it.
The last thing vaccine interests want is for Covid to settle out without a perception that a vaccine is a must-have and preferably one mandated by the national governments and fake world governments such as WHO.
If you think it's bad that some hedge funds profited off shorting this thing, the $$$ and power involved in establishing that a vaccine is a must-have, and then being the one to get your vaccine approved and/or being the delivery pipeline of that vaccine is a businesses dream and a communists' very very wet dream.
Any effective treatment that knocks this thing down once someone has it is the enemy. They need fear fear fear followed by control control control.
So I think the bulk of this is not about Orange Man Bad, although of course Trump is aligned with those of us who disdain fear and control as enemies of individual freedom.
You could lose your life taking an aspirin. Typical “let’s not even think about using math, because we’re journalists and - well- math is why we are only journalists”.
They mean that it hasn’t been proven in strict clinical trials.
This is such BS. If it’s so deadly, why the hell is it prescribed to millions every year with no recorded deaths? The hysteria created around this is comes from the pit of hell.
I hope all the liberals refuse to take it! Winning!
“Dr. Raymond L. Woosley is a professor of medicine at The University of Arizona”
So he is not a practicing physician on the front lines.If he was, why would anyone with covid seek him out for treatment if he won’t prescribe hydroxy. Just let em suffer, doc because there is a one in a million chance they mat have a serious side effect. Is that your answer?
Chemotherapy drugs are hell on the body but their purpose is to destroy or interfere with cancerous cells. A short one week course with hydroxychloroquine isn’t worth a far less risk if it helps keep patients off the ventilators?
Pure Garbage!
Lupus and other patients have been taking it for over 70 years with no such side effects.
Some of these "experts" simply don't want a low margin, generic drug to be the global response, because it displaces HIGH PROFIT MARGIN new drugs, still in the testing phase.
It also interferes with a larger socialist control agenda.
Clearly, the best thing to do if you get the disease is to die from it.
RE: Big pharma shill
He speaks quite favorably and fairly of Hydroxychloroquine for a big pharma shill.
The side effects he’s talking about are for long-term use. Not 5 - 7 days. Very disingenuous.
Took one week of this treatment to get my nephew from ICU to home. If there were significant side effects or people who used it and died it would trumpeted 24/7 by stooge media. All they got is “who cares if its saving people, where’s your double blind study?”.
Stop telling us HCQ has side effects. It’s well known but the cases are rare. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4960328/ Out of 48,911 people reported to have side effects when taking Plaquenil, 17 people (0.03%) had Long qt syndrome. https://www.ehealthme.com/ds/plaquenil/long-qt-syndrome/ The danger is for those who already have long qt syndrome or underlying heart disease. If appropriate QTc monitoring algorithms are instituted the risk for at risk populations can be mitigated. I so tired of physicians who should no better sounding their calamity horns for limited risk to limited subsets of the population. If the threat of Co-vid so damn bad then don’t oppose it’s use because of extremely limited risk.
The title and first paragraph don’t sound favorable and the rest of the article looks rather ambiguous to me.
Funny thing but when I was in the Army in Korea in the 70s, these hydroxychloroquine pills were on every table in the mess hall, right between the salt and the pepper. We were ordered to take so many per day/week. So much for the dangers of taking these pills.
Quack doctor
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