I don't know outside of proprietary situations that I've ever seen somebody refuse to disclose data for independent third-party review, unless there were concerns about confidentiality which I suspect is not the issue here. All confidential information should have been stripped out from the data. So it's really puzzling and I'm not sure what to make of it but it is a good reason for retraction because it blocks peer review. For those holding out hope that this means somehow hydroxychloroquine has got a second life, I would say don't get your hopes up.
-
Want to remove ads? Register an account and login to see fewer ads, and become a Supporting Member to remove almost all ads.
Coronavirus
- Thread starter Wenche
- Start date
I don't know outside of proprietary situations that I've ever seen somebody refuse to disclose data for independent third-party review, unless there were concerns about confidentiality which I suspect is not the issue here. All confidential information should have been stripped out from the data. So it's really puzzling and I'm not sure what to make of it but it is a good reason for retraction because it blocks peer review. For those holding out hope that this means somehow hydroxychloroquine has got a second life, I would say don't get your hopes up.
I think you have to view the statistics coming out of Brazil and for that matter China and a number of other countries where there is totalitarian government with great skepticism. That includes Russia of course. But in all of these places the leadership is powerful enough to squelch reporting. I suspect that there are some states that are also fudging numbers, and in that sense USA death totals are probably an underestimation especially in view of the so-called excess death statistics. But anyway you slice it this thing is cutting a wide and destructive path. And we're not even close to any version of herd immunity even in New York City the place that is clearly had the deepest penetration by covid-19. If you assume just as a ballpark estimate that the United States actually has 10 million infected, that means we are 1/20th of the way to even a weak herd immunity position. By that I mean that with an organism as contagious is covid-19, 60% penetration probably is not enough to keep R subscript under one without social distancing and some mitigation measures. I suspect we'll need 70-75% to do that.
Australia unfortunately is an extremely optimistic example for the United States. They have a low enough penetration of Active cases that they can do contact tracing and testing of all contacts. This allows them to keep R under one indefinitely. We have barely with brutal blunt-force instruments like stay-at-home been able to get R under one in a lot of states. And it's unclear whether or not we've got the resources to do contract racing at scale and we clearly do not have the resources to do testing at scale at least not in the numbers needed. So in that sense, Australia is not a good model to figure out what's going to happen here.
I am going to nominate the state of Georgia as one that might be painting a different picture than reality.
If you only look at official numbers, you would think that they have pretty much eliminated the virus starting about two weeks ago. They’ve reported just over 1,000 cases only in the past week combined. About a 7x reduction just by opening up the state.
ETA: Maybe this is what CA gov Newsom is hoping for as well. Up to individual counties, but pretty much everything besides mass gatherings is allowed to open now that we are at 1,000% higher daily new case count compared to when shelter in place first went into effect.
Last edited:
It's true that the United States has a deeply anti-intellectual culture in a lot of places. But I think a big problem is the way that schooling and school systems in many parts of the country actually destroy children's intrinsic curiosity instead of building upon it. Learning hinged to our innate curiosity is not work, it's an exploratory journey, but compelling all on its own. That's certainly how my scientific career has worked for me. I was utterly fascinated to learn about chemistry at an early age - that there were these hidden rules and processes determining how matter combined and interacted. That there was a deep order underneath all the seeming chaos of the world.
Science in this country is taught often times in a way that simply kills our native intrinsic interest and wonder about nature. That's a colossal intellectual and even spiritual tragedy, and it wastes obviously our most precious resource which is the minds and hearts of kids. If you instead teach science from an early age as a great place to learn about how amazing and deep Nature really is, you amplify wonder and curiosity instead of killing it, and a lot more people would get pulled into the Sciences.
Last edited:
Yes with Kemp at the wheel it's obvious he is one of the most corrupted guys after all he believed that he could manage an election in which he was a candidate, instead of admitting the conflict of interest. Only a corrupt person believes that. But it'll be interesting to see what happens when the case numbers start to blow up past the ability of his face painting department to cover them up.
bkp_duke
Well-Known Member
UK halts trial of coronavirus drug touted by Trump after no benefit found
Co-Leader of the study:
“This result should change medical practice worldwide. We can now stop using a drug that is useless.”
The data showed that after about 28 days, 25.7% of the patients who received hydroxychloroquine had died compared with 23.5% of patients who received usual care alone.
"That is not statistically significant, but as you can see from the numbers, that result shows that there's really no evidence of a benefit," Landray said.
The professor added preliminary results from the RECOVERY trial, which was a randomised trial, were clear that the drug did not reduce the risk of death among hospitalised patients with Covid-19.
“If you're admitted to hospital, don't take hydroxychloroquine,” Mr Landray said.
Co-Leader of the study:
“This result should change medical practice worldwide. We can now stop using a drug that is useless.”
The data showed that after about 28 days, 25.7% of the patients who received hydroxychloroquine had died compared with 23.5% of patients who received usual care alone.
"That is not statistically significant, but as you can see from the numbers, that result shows that there's really no evidence of a benefit," Landray said.
The professor added preliminary results from the RECOVERY trial, which was a randomised trial, were clear that the drug did not reduce the risk of death among hospitalised patients with Covid-19.
“If you're admitted to hospital, don't take hydroxychloroquine,” Mr Landray said.
AlanSubie4Life
Efficiency Obsessed Member
Again, I've previously made my thoughts on HCQ clear. But a few comments here:
1) This is a press release only. No clinical benefit from use of hydroxychloroquine in hospitalised patients with COVID-19 — RECOVERY Trial There isn't any data yet - should wait until that is available to be able to say more...
2) It appears to have been tested on the sickest patients only.
3) It's not combined with any other drugs (zinc or a macrolide or whatever people like to talk about) - or at least it is not mentioned, or I missed it, if it is...
To me it just seems to confirm that HCQ alone doesn't really help much for sick patients, which I thought we already knew (though it's definitely good to have a proper large randomized datapoint, rather than an observational study).
So I don't see this as the last word, yet.
@dfwatt your comment makes me think of Isaac Asimov's quote from 1980. My apologies as it's probably been posted before, maybe even in this thread:
"There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there has always been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that 'my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge."
/TCP
bkp_duke
Well-Known Member
I didn't say it was the last word, it's hot off the presses and the paper is not yet available. However, multi-thousands of patients, and the lead researcher is making a public comment about why they are stopping enrollment. That's a strong statement, and you don't stop enrollment until you get statistical significance. It will probably be a week or longer till the paper is out, even with the authors and reviewers burning the midnight oil. That's rapid pace for science, as every paper I was involved with took months at least for that process.
We'll know more, of course, but this just adds to the growing pile of evidence that HCQ is worthless for COVID-19.
The debate over censorship might be an interesting one in another thread at another time. That’s not my real concern. My real concern is that Elon’s vision of reality does not map onto the leading Epidemiologists, Infectious Disease Docs and Virologists best understanding. And my main concern over that is I believe he needs the best understanding of reality possible, in order to make the wisest decisions:
- Elon thought the U.S. would be at zero new infections over 1 month ago. When asked about that last week, he claimed he was only 3-4 weeks off.
- On Joe Rogan, Elon stated the experts were off by 10X-100X on the fatality rate. This would mean no more dangerous than the flu.
- On Joe Rogan, he also claimed that there was a conspiracy between hospital administrators and doctors such that they’re filling out false death certificates.
So to sum up, Elon believes he was initially correct that CV was no more deadly than the flu, and when reality contradicted his initial thesis, he began adopting conspiracy theories being promulgated in certain right wing media.
The consensus of Epidemiologists is that:
- CV is at least 10X as deadly as the flu.
- It is far, far more contagious.
- In the U.S., we are only about 5% infected, meaning we’re less than 1/10th of the way through this nightmare.
- The virus will either continue throughout the Summer, or an even scarier possibility is that it may die down and after we let our guard down, come back with a vengeance in the Fall.
- Hopefully we’ll have a widely deployable vaccine in the U.S. early next year.
Now if everyone can convince me it is unimportant for a CEO to have his map of reality be that far off from expert consensus and therefore there’s no effect on his decision making, then maybe I’m concerned for nothing.
Last edited by a moderator:
So to disprove 3 Elon's points (in your interpretation) you posted 5 different and unrelated points. Logic confirmed.
Here's why it's very unlikely that future studies are going to resuscitate hydroxychloroquine even with zinc. There are a lot less toxic zinc ionophores besides hcq. For example, quercetin, but also EGCG. If it turns out that the therapeutic effect is associated with intracellular zinc, you've got a much less toxic pathway to say nothing of much cheaper. Even as I say this I have to admit that with our crazy chargemaster Healthcare system, the most expensive pharmacologic approach with the worst benefit/side effect ratios often still get preserved. But over time they get exposed for the bad value that they are - I'm speaking optimistically here of course.
AlanSubie4Life
Efficiency Obsessed Member
Yeah, I wouldn't be surprised at all if we saw nothing. Seems like if there were a strong benefit we would have seen it somewhere by now, in a reliable study.
These were Elon's points. He has made these claims. Is there some insane debate about whether he actually said these things, that I am not aware of? Just look at the Joe Rogan transcipt, the Bloomberg hero article, and his Twitter feed.
Huh? These seem related. (Though I think it being 10x as deadly as the flu depends on which flu you are comparing to. It's certainly more deadly than any flu since the "1917" (1918) Spanish flu. )
The other points didn't need refutation.
Last edited:
Krugerrand
Meow
Oh, stop it already. You’re no more concerned about what Elon thinks on this topic as I am what you think about my current diet and exercise choices.
If you really were half as concerned as you claim, you’d have packed up your all your Tesla and TSLA related toys and left the forum. Yes. That’s what reasonable, intelligent people do when they’re actually concerned. They cut ties and move the eff on.
I don’t believe ANYONE about ANYTHING, if and until they’ve proven to moi that they actually have a clue. Case in point - the expert economists didn’t even get close to predicting the unemployment rate for May.
So, yeah. I extend that to ALL professions because frankly that’s how it’s always worked in the world from my own little inconsequential perspective of reality.
Elon is absolutely brilliant at what he does. He’s also entitled to have his opinion on any and all subjects. He’s also quite capable of being wrong on a subject he’s not well-versed in, but it doesn’t take away from the fact he’s absolutely brilliant at what he does, which is entirely UNRELATED to his opinion about COVID19. That you can’t distinguish the difference is your problem, not his.
He made sure Q1 was a success and he fought to get his company back manufacturing for Q2. On his behalf: you’re welcome.
Not sure where you're getting your numbers. Is it from here:
COVID-19 Status Report
If so, you might notice the shaded "14-day window" and text stating that the window contains incomplete data. The chart has always looked that way, even weeks ago.
You might also note the "bulge" in positives around May 18th. According to local radio, that was due to a bunch of state testing in a hotspot in Hall county. It was done for a study.
Quick followup. If you're interested in GA, look at the following sites:
Today in Georgia - COVID-19 in Georgia
COVID-19 Status Report
The first one is from a private citizen who attempts to unwind the blood tests from the nasal swabs. It's a mess. The bottom line is that the positivity rate is and has been around 10%.
Today in Georgia - COVID-19 in Georgia
COVID-19 Status Report
The first one is from a private citizen who attempts to unwind the blood tests from the nasal swabs. It's a mess. The bottom line is that the positivity rate is and has been around 10%.
‘The fact that you don’t “believe anyone about anything” presumably includes the Scientific consensus on Coronavirus. Ok, if you value your opinion that highly, nothing more needs to be said. If it’s all the same to you, I’ll go with the consensus of the epidemiologists, virologists, and infectious disease specialists, over yours.
AlanSubie4Life
Efficiency Obsessed Member
Yeah, seems like the antibody test mixing makes it difficult to tell what is going on. I haven't even tried to unwind that data. But generally Georgia (currently) seems like less of a concern than:
Arkansas, Arizona, Alabama, Kentucky, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Utah, and to a lesser extent, Texas and Florida (those two might be showing early signs of an uptick). There seem to generally be continued ramps in hospitalizations in these states (or substantial increases in positivity), which is troubling.
Alaska is also a shame. They could probably have stamped out the virus if they had tried.
Going to be a game of whack-a-mole from hereon out, I guess. Looks like we could (potentially) really get a head of steam on some of these state infection levels, and that'll throw off sparks elsewhere.
Very hard to predict - if increasing cases are due to much better targeting of testing, it could be a good thing! But you hate to see the increasing hospitalizations (unless they had undiagnosed hospitalizations previously).
Last edited:
Similar threads
