Coronavirus

[AlanSubie4Life]

I wouldn’t say I’m certain, but it sure looks like this comes down to, with the correct RX, with the inclusion of zinc, and in the initial stage of the disease, this is a very powerful tool. incorrect RX, exclusion of zinc, and in more advanced stage of covid, not of help.

I do wish someone would just do the study according to the proponents’ specifications so we could stop talking about it.

I am not sure whether it is ethical to do so now as other treatments seem to have much more marked effects, but there must be a way to do this.

It’s all so absurd. All we have is uncontrolled studies of the cocktail where “like a miracle” 350 patients all recover. That is not that improbable especially with appropriate prescreening. Nothing definitive after 6 months (maybe there is but I have not been paying attention).

I remember people talking about Dr. Varon with his cocktail of drugs, and how no one had died. They had had just 50 patients! Fairly sure not the case at UMMC anymore, unfortunately. Dr. Varon continues to work to save lives, of course. Not sure what he is doing now.

 

[SteveG3]

I do wish someone would just do the study according to the proponents’ specifications so we could stop talking about it.

I am not sure whether it is ethical to do so now as other treatments seem to have much more marked effects, but there must be a way to do this.

It’s all so absurd. All we have is uncontrolled studies of the cocktail where “like a miracle” 350 patients all recover. That is not that improbable especially with appropriate prescreening. Nothing definitive after 6 months (maybe there is but I have not been paying attention).

I remember people talking about Dr. Varon with his cocktail of drugs, and how no one had died. They had had just 50 patients! Fairly sure not the case at UMMC anymore, unfortunately. Dr. Varon continues to work to save lives, of course. Not sure what he is doing now.

I mentioned two studies

one, the Henry Ford health system study (HF), was a 2,500 patient peer-reviewed published study. it showed a 50% reduction in fatalities for the HCQ group. these were hospitalized patients who began treatment within 48 hours of admission. zinc was not used. would be great to see another large study like this with zinc among outpatient cases within 5 days of symptom onset, as well as a study at initial hospitalization with the same HCQ combo.


you wrote of other treatments with more marked effects... I saw a headline claiming patients “more than twice as likely to recover” with a drug this week, among 100 patients in a study yet to be peer reviewed. other than HCQ with zinc & antibiotic according to Zelenko, I’m not aware of any treatment claiming to beat the 50% fatality reduction of the HF study, much less the 80-90% Zelenko claims. Note, I write claims re Zelenko as his study has not been peer reviewed as of now.

what are the other treatments you’ve seen “with much more marked effects” than a 50% reduction in fatalities?

 

[Papafox]

I do wish someone would just do the study according to the proponents’ specifications so we could stop talking about it.

I am not sure whether it is ethical to do so now as other treatments seem to have much more marked effects, but there must be a way to do this.

It’s all so absurd. All we have is uncontrolled studies of the cocktail where “like a miracle” 350 patients all recover. That is not that improbable especially with appropriate prescreening. Nothing definitive after 6 months (maybe there is but I have not been paying attention).

I remember people talking about Dr. Varon with his cocktail of drugs, and how no one had died. They had had just 50 patients! Fairly sure not the case at UMMC anymore, unfortunately. Dr. Varon continues to work to save lives, of course. Not sure what he is doing now.

The retrospective study of HCQ with zinc that many of us are most interested in seeing peer reviewed and published in a medical journal is the following:
COVID-19 Outpatients – Early Risk-Stratified Treatment with Zinc Plus Low Dose Hydroxychloroquine and Azithromycin: A Retrospective Case Series Study
The apparent results are impressive. I say apparent because I'm not a researcher and I'd like to see what problems are brought up in peer review. Let's get this study published and see how it shakes out. I'm really not interested in debating the study here. Let's give the peer review process at the medical journal that job, please. The treatment has potential merit on a world stage because it is so inexpensive to administer. My guess is that by the time this drug cocktail could be cleared for more widespread use in the U.S., better therapeutics such as the lab-created antibody treatments will be available. We'll see.

 

[AlanSubie4Life]

I mentioned two studies

one, the Henry Ford health system study (HF), was a 2,500 patient peer-reviewed published study. it showed a 50% reduction in fatalities for the HCQ group. these were hospitalized patients who began treatment within 48 hours of admission. zinc was not used. would be great to see another large study like this with zinc among outpatient cases within 5 days of symptom onset, as well as a study at initial hospitalization with the same HCQ combo.


you wrote of other treatments with more marked effects... I saw a headline claiming patients “more than twice as likely to recover” with a drug this week, among 100 patients in a study yet to be peer reviewed. other than HCQ with zinc & antibiotic according to Zelenko, I’m not aware of any treatment claiming to beat the 50% fatality reduction of the HF study, much less the 80-90% Zelenko claims. Note, I write claims re Zelenko as his study has not been peer reviewed as of now.

what are the other treatments you’ve seen “with much more marked effects” than a 50% reduction in fatalities?

I don’t know man. I don’t follow this stuff too closely because it turned absurd. Seems like remdesivir and dexamethasone and plasma and early intervention and possibly reduced initial viral load are driving down IFR. We’ll see. Still too early to say for sure, but it appears to me IFR has dropped a bit, even after accounting for the age differences of those infected. Might be nothing - might be entirely due to the vulnerable keeping themselves safe.

In any case, I am only interested in randomized controlled trials with the exactly correct regimen. Would be nice to see it done on a high risk group before they show symptoms, and a variety of other scenarios. The Ford study I think has been dissected here ad nauseum and I’m not going to relitigate that here.

Just waiting for an RCT with the exact regimen. Are you saying that is coming? (I have not perused any of the papers you mentioned, recently.)

Retrospective studies aren’t of much interest to me. It just seems so hard to tease out all the confounders.

Without data, my sense (this is total guess based on it being so difficult to identify any HCQ effect thus far) is that HCQ etc. is at best going to be nibbling around the edges of mortality. Definitely something to figure out, but not a game changer or “cure” as has been claimed recently. But I hope this sense (guess) of mine is actually wrong and it really is miraculous and at the low doses proposed has minimal negative effects (something that has to be considered of course).

 

[SteveG3]

I don’t know man. I don’t follow this stuff too closely because it turned absurd. Seems like remdesivir and dexamethasone and plasma and early intervention and possibly reduced initial viral load are driving down IFR. We’ll see. Still too early to say for sure, but it appears to me IFR has dropped a bit, even after accounting for the age differences of those infected. Might be nothing - might be entirely due to the vulnerable keeping themselves safe.

In any case, I am only interested in randomized controlled trials with the exactly correct regimen. Would be nice to see it done on a high risk group before they show symptoms, and a variety of other scenarios. The Ford study I think has been dissected here ad nauseum and I’m not going to relitigate that here.

Just waiting for an RCT with the exact regimen. Are you saying that is coming? (I have not perused any of the papers you mentioned, recently.)

Retrospective studies aren’t of much interest to me. It just seems so hard to tease out all the confounders.

I’m not aware of even ANY claims of remdesivir reducing fatality rates. what I saw was it reduced number of days to recovery for hospitalized patients. perhaps there’s been further remdesivir data re fatalities, but I think it would have been all over the media and I’d of seen it. maybe I missed it.

If you have a study on dexamethasone or any other treatment that had over a 50% reduction in fatalities, please post here. otherwise, why the claim of other treatments “with much more marked effects.”. you don’t owe me an apology, but, your “funny” rating of my original comment? I’ve backed my claims up with data, but thus far you haven’t.

as to criticism of the HF study, I’ve not been a regular on this thread. what I’ve seen mentioned elsewhere is the HCQ group with the 50% reduction was younger than the non treatment group. that is true but the mean age difference was 3.9 or 4.9 years (going off memory). it’s possible that contributed a marginal amount to the 50% reduction, but that is all. what’s more, the study did not include zinc. I would be very surprised if adding zinc would not have more than made up for backing out any impact of that 4 or 5 year age difference.

 

[Dave EV]

It's not about the money, it's about the commitment and buying into the simple stuff like social distancing, mask wearing, and surface sanitation (i.e. clean up the dugouts, have wipes available, etc.). They are cheap, but effective, solutions.

I'm really surprised that MLB isn't mandating the use of masks in the dugout and at other positions where players are close together: Umpires, catchers and batters. As we saw with the Marlins, it just takes one player to get sick, and then it quickly spreads through the dugout. Mandating masks would significantly mitigate the risk.

Also, they're supposed to have banned spitting - but still see them doing it - even when at bat and the catcher/umpire are right there. I fully will not be surprised to see another outbreak with the final result having this attempt of a season shut down. Which is too bad, because it is a nice distraction.

 

[jerry33]

Now we need a map for correct mask usage. No vented masks, covering both nose and mouth, putting the mask on when getting out of the car, not just one metre before entering the store, taking the mask off every time a person needs to talk, etc.

 

[nctalkinghead]

...Also, they're supposed to have banned spitting - but still see them doing it
No peanuts, popcorn, Cracker Jacks, spitting, and crotch grabbing - that just ain't baseball.

 

[NikolaACDC]

Thanks to a quarantine breach, qld's nearly 3 month run of no locally-acquired cases is now over.

https://7news.com.au/lifestyle/heal...es-must-immediately-self-quarantine-c-1204326

Teens at centre of potential outbreak identified

"Police believe three young women at the centre of a Queensland coronavirus outbreak hosted an “illegal” party while in Victoria.
The women, who travelled from Victoria to Queensland and allegedly lied to police on their border forms, were today branded “deceitful and deceptive” by Queensland Police.
A police source today said they believe 20 people attended a party hosted by the three women during their trip to Melbourne earlier this month, the Brisbane Times reports."

"Police announced today all three women had been formally charged under the Public Health Act for allegedly providing false information to police on their border declarations."

 

[bkp_duke]

This was waiting for a peer review, How long does the review take? Zinc-hydroxychloroquine Found Effective In Some COVID-19 Patients: Study

With pier review, longer = not good. It usually means the pier review process found substantial problems and are giving the authors a chance to address those problems (if possible).

 

[bkp_duke]

Papafox nailed the main points, 2X the dosage of the Henry Ford HS 2,500 patient peer reviewed study (and 2X dosage of Zelenko’s claimed results with 141 patients in pre-print as well), and no inclusion of zinc.

What’s more, this new study not showing improved outcomes was in hospitalized patients, like the HF study, but unlike that successful HF study there is no indication of any effort to begin HCQ+ within the first 48 hours of hospitalization.

I wouldn’t say I’m certain, but it sure looks like this comes down to, with the correct RX, with the inclusion of zinc, and in the initial stage of the disease, this is a very powerful tool. incorrect RX, exclusion of zinc, and in more advanced stage of covid, not of help.

fwiw, I did not vote for Trump in ‘16 & will not now. I just look at this a drug to follow the science on rather than “Trump’s drug.”

I've said this at least a dozen times in this thread, but it bears repeating now:

When evaluating scientific evidence - you MUST look at the body of evidence as a whole, not cherry pick anything. Bias in science is not tolerated, and for good reason.

If we apply that to HCQ +/- AZTH +/- zinc we come to the following inevitable conclusions:
1) HCQ in any setting, with or without AZTH has NO POSITIVE effect on COVID-19. This is for all spectrum of disease (mild, moderate, and severe). Over 95% of studies show that now, with the 5% that show a benefit being the earlier pilot studies that have been pointed out to have significant methodology problems.
2) Zinc - the definitive jury is out on this, but by adding in HCQ and AZTH - both of which cause significant heart arrhythmias in a significant percentage of the population - the harm to benefit ration is not looking good. Zinc would have to have a massive effect to overcome that detrimental landscape caused by the two other drugs. If the effect were that great, it should be visible in and of itself.



So again, not cherry picking, but looking at the body of evidence as a whole, HCQ looks like a complete dud.

 

[bkp_duke]

I seldom visit this thread anymore, but since I was alerted to this post by name, let me respond. The study above uses the wrong dose for HCQ, 400mg instead of the safer 200mg used in the successful HCQ studies. Further, the study leaves out an essential ingredient in the treatment, which is zinc. The whole purpose of the HCQ was to give zinc access to the cells. This is a study that was designed to produce a failure. I'm not surprised by the findings.

See above reply. If Zinc were a magic bullet, it would have to overcome the known detrimental effects of HCQ and AZTH. I still have that offer of a (very nice) steak dinner to you if that turns out to be true.

 

[bkp_duke]

I mentioned two studies

one, the Henry Ford health system study (HF), was a 2,500 patient peer-reviewed published study. it showed a 50% reduction in fatalities for the HCQ group. these were hospitalized patients who began treatment within 48 hours of admission. zinc was not used. would be great to see another large study like this with zinc among outpatient cases within 5 days of symptom onset, as well as a study at initial hospitalization with the same HCQ combo.


you wrote of other treatments with more marked effects... I saw a headline claiming patients “more than twice as likely to recover” with a drug this week, among 100 patients in a study yet to be peer reviewed. other than HCQ with zinc & antibiotic according to Zelenko, I’m not aware of any treatment claiming to beat the 50% fatality reduction of the HF study, much less the 80-90% Zelenko claims. Note, I write claims re Zelenko as his study has not been peer reviewed as of now.

what are the other treatments you’ve seen “with much more marked effects” than a 50% reduction in fatalities?

The HF study was NOT blinded. It is why the general scientific community has not accepted the results from it.

The HF study was ALSO used in conjunction with STEROIDS. Steroids like dexamethasone, by themselves, have been attributed with a significant reduction in both morbidity and mortality with COVID-19. Essentially, the entire benefit of the "coctail" given in the HF study could be attributed to the use of anti-inflammatory steroids, not HCQ. Their own paper admits this "The clinical guidelines included adjunctive immunomodulatory therapy with corticosteroids and tocilizumab."

 

[JRP3]

as to criticism of the HF study, I’ve not been a regular on this thread. what I’ve seen mentioned elsewhere is the HCQ group with the 50% reduction was younger than the non treatment group. that is true but the mean age difference was 3.9 or 4.9 years (going off memory). it’s possible that contributed a marginal amount to the 50% reduction, but that is all. what’s more, the study did not include zinc. I would be very surprised if adding zinc would not have more than made up for backing out any impact of that 4 or 5 year age difference.

No you can't just speculate away a large age difference with a disease where negative outcomes are skewed to the elderly. That study was extremely flawed in my opinion, non treatment group was older, treatment group eliminated people with cardiac issues, more people in the treatment group received steroids than the non treatment group, and there was no randomization so treatment biases were likely applied in all cases. I'd call this study garbage. Show me RCTs.

*duke beat me to it.

 

[bkp_duke]

The retrospective study of HCQ with zinc that many of us are most interested in seeing peer reviewed and published in a medical journal is the following:
COVID-19 Outpatients – Early Risk-Stratified Treatment with Zinc Plus Low Dose Hydroxychloroquine and Azithromycin: A Retrospective Case Series Study
The apparent results are impressive. I say apparent because I'm not a researcher and I'd like to see what problems are brought up in peer review. Let's get this study published and see how it shakes out. I'm really not interested in debating the study here. Let's give the peer review process at the medical journal that job, please. The treatment has potential merit on a world stage because it is so inexpensive to administer. My guess is that by the time this drug cocktail could be cleared for more widespread use in the U.S., better therapeutics such as the lab-created antibody treatments will be available. We'll see.

I encourge you to actually read the comments in the above study you linked. Most of those are actually from scientists and physicians, and they give you a good idea of the questions that the piers most likely have asked the original publishers of the article to expound upon, explain, and re-evaluate. You even get in many of them to see the actual physician/scientist making the comments.

 

[dfwatt]

Was this a Fox or Sinclair news station?

The author of that post was actually the winner of the 2020 White Supremacist Award here.

 

[bkp_duke]

I’m not aware of even ANY claims of remdesivir reducing fatality rates. what I saw was it reduced number of days to recovery for hospitalized patients. perhaps there’s been further remdesivir data re fatalities, but I think it would have been all over the media and I’d of seen it. maybe I missed it.

Let me Google that for you:
Gilead reports reduced mortality risk with remdesivir for Covid-19
"The data include findings from a comparative analysis of the Phase III SIMPLE-Severe clinical trial and a real-world retrospective cohort of patients with a severe form of the disease.

According to the analysis, the drug demonstrated an improvement in clinical recovery and a 62% reduction in the risk of mortality compared to standard of care."


As a physician, if I got sick with COVID-19 tomorrow, I would be screaming at the doc treating me to put me on Dexamethasone and Remdesivir.

 

[dfwatt]

I seldom visit this thread anymore, but since I was alerted to this post by name, let me respond. The study above uses the wrong dose for HCQ, 400mg instead of the safer 200mg used in the successful HCQ studies. Further, the study leaves out an essential ingredient in the treatment, which is zinc. The whole purpose of the HCQ was to give zinc access to the cells. This is a study that was designed to produce a failure. I'm not surprised by the findings.

I suspect that the only contribution of hydrochloriquine is as a zinc ionophore. However there are far less toxic zinc ionophores particularly, for example, quercetin and EGCG. They also both have health benefits as opposed to health risks associated with hydroxychloroquine. Therefore in my estimation there is no good reason to take hydroxychloroquine.

 

[dfwatt]

Papafox nailed the main points, 2X the dosage of the Henry Ford HS 2,500 patient peer reviewed study (and 2X dosage of Zelenko’s claimed results with 141 patients in pre-print as well), and no inclusion of zinc.

What’s more, this new study not showing improved outcomes was in hospitalized patients, like the HF study, but unlike that successful HF study there is no indication of any effort to begin HCQ+ within the first 48 hours of hospitalization.

I wouldn’t say I’m certain, but it sure looks like this comes down to, with the correct RX, with the inclusion of zinc, and in the initial stage of the disease, this is a very powerful tool. incorrect RX, exclusion of zinc, and in more advanced stage of covid, not of help.

fwiw, I did not vote for Trump in ‘16 & will not now. I just look at this a drug to follow the science on rather than “Trump’s drug.”

As I posted already Elsewhere on the Forum, hydroxychloroquine is simply a bad choice for a zinc ionophore, in terms of its risk / benefit ratio. It's toxic, risks cardiac arrhythmias, and the job can be done by less toxic compounds such as quercetin and a green tea polyphenol known as EGCG. Additionally those polyphenols have potential health benefits whereas HCQ does not.

 

[AlanSubie4Life]

If you have a study on dexamethasone or any other treatment that had over a 50% reduction in fatalities, please post here. otherwise, why the claim of other treatments “with much more marked effects.”. you don’t owe me an apology, but, your “funny” rating of my original comment? I’ve backed my claims up with data, but thus far you haven’t.

Fortunately others have backed up the claims. (And my claims were at best vague and non-specific, since I really have no idea which treatment exactly appears to be bringing down mortality a bit.) I specifically said I’m tired of it and have no interest in relitigating studies and data that have already been covered in this thread. If we get a double-blind placebo-controlled randomized trial showing HCQ cocktail, as promoted, reduces mortality significantly, my interest will be piqued.

The “funny” rating was just me smiling about HCQ cocktail being described as a powerful tool, and just the general absurdity that we are still talking about this after six months, and we still do not have an RCT study of the supposedly magic regimen (I really wish we had that!).

as to criticism of the HF study, I’ve not been a regular on this thread. what I’ve seen mentioned elsewhere is the HCQ group with the 50% reduction was younger than the non treatment group. that is true but the mean age difference was 3.9 or 4.9 years (going off memory). it’s possible that contributed a marginal amount to the 50% reduction, but that is all. what’s more, the study did not include zinc. I would be very surprised if adding zinc would not have more than made up for backing out any impact of that 4 or 5 year age difference.

If you want to review the whole discussion here, the search feature with appropriate terms should bring up everything you want to know. The timing is coincident with when all of this stuff was big in the media several months ago.