The author's friend Mike Nadler, who happened to watching, too, was so outraged that he fired off an email to Cavuto refuting him, which the author shares with permission:
Hello Neil,
I’m whipping this together quickly because I was quite distressed about the dismissal of hydroxychlooquine by the doctor you had on your show today after President Trump revealed that he is taking it, along with zinc, prophylactically. You cited the deaths in the report released last month of the VA study. Here is some information you should be aware of about that study, and more.
The VA study by Magagnoli et al., which was posted on April 23, 2020 as a non-peer reviewed preprint, studied 368 patients of which 210 were treated with hydroxychloroquine (HCQ) or HCQ plus azithromycin (AZ). The study points to an association of HCQ with increased mortality but implicitly acknowledges its limitations as a retrospective study by concluding, in part:
"In this study, we found no evidence that use of hydroxychloroquine, either with or without azithromycin, reduced the risk of mechanical ventilation in patients hospitalized with Covid-19. An association of increased overall mortality was identified in patients treated with hydroxychloroquine alone. These findings highlight the importance of awaiting the results of ongoing prospective, randomized, controlled studies before widespread adoption of these drugs."
But the key finding of an association of HCQ with higher fatality rates appears to be totally bogus. Three weeks ago, I circulated this devastating 2-page critique of the Magagnoli VA study by the renowned French infectious disease expert Didier Raoult et al. The critique identified “3 voluntary biases…all pushing to the idea of dangerosity of hydroxychloroquine” in the VA study including "two major biases,” one being that the finding of higher fatality rate for patients receiving HCQ is due to their being initially much sicker with lymphopenia than those who did not receive HCQ.
The critique starts off, "In the current period, it seems that passion dominates rigorous and balanced scientific analysis and may lead to scientific misconduct. The article by Magagnoli et al. (Magagnoli, 2020) is an absolutely spectacular example of this.” It ends with: "All in all, this is a work that shows that, in this period, it is possible to propose things that do not stand up to any methodological analysis to try to demonstrate that one is right." I have not read of anyone trying to refute the points in this critique.
On May 5, 2020, the peer-reviewed scientific journal, Travel Medicine and Infectious Disease (the official journal of the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Glasgow and the Latin American Society for Travel Medicine) published the results of Didier and his colleagues own retrospective study of 1,061 Covid-19 patients treated with HCQ and azithromycin. It concluded, "Administration of the HCQ+AZ combination before COVID-19 complications occur is safe and associated with very low fatality rate in patients."
***
Links to a few other articles on the subject are linked below:
Why we need a clinical trial of hydroxycholoroquine, azithromycin, and zinc ASAP - American Thinker
Shoddy Hydroxychloroquine Journalism | National Review
NIH's New Hydroxychloroquine Trial May Be Destined to Fail
Dr. Fauci and the Tuskegee Syphilis Study victims - American Thinker
Zinc-hydroxychloroquine found effective in some COVID-19 patients: study - Breitbart
Is Big Pharma behind the great war on hydroxychloroquine? - American Thinker
Regards,
Michael R. Nadler, Ph.D.