I am referring, of course, to the medication hydroxychloroquine. When this inexpensive oral medication is given very early in the course of illness, before the virus has had time to multiply beyond control, it has shown to be highly effective, especially when given in combination with the antibiotics azithromycin or doxycycline and the nutritional supplement zinc.
Hydroxychloroquine is only controversial because Trump championed it. Otherwise it would be a detail of interest only to doctors treating COVID and researchers evaluating the success of these treatments.
Political hyper-polarization and social media amplification of divisive content to drive "engagement" is making us all collectively lose our damn minds.
If Trump says the sky is blue, his followers mindlessly believe it and everyone else will mindlessly decide the sky must instead be green. If Trump says the sky is green, his followers will mindlessly believe it and everyone else will mindlessly revert to thinking the sky is blue. The effect of a personality like Trump and how people react to him is quite possibly worse than Trump himself.
Either HCQ works or it doesn't. Deciding that and deciding how best to use it if it does work is a job for scientists and doctors. If you are not a scientist, doctor, or otherwise guided by real data that you are qualified to evaluate, your opinion on this issue is not valid and you need to shut up. What Trump or some other media whoring ass clown does or does not believe is irrelevant and will probably change next week anyway. Neither Trump nor his detractors have a valid opinion on this issue (unless they are actual professionals).
I disagree. I think the anti-Trump crowd would've happily been on board with HCQ if Trump had said it was helpful and then scientific studies then also concluded it was helpful and that was the end of it.
Instead, the FDA publicly retracted it's authorization for the use of HCQ and said it did more harm than good, and so public sentiment solidified behind the idea that it was stupid all along. If the FDA hadn't done that and the treatment continued to prove effective, I think we would all generally be on board with it.
There are a lot of ways in which it turns out anti-Trumpers are exactly the same as Trump supporters, but the anti-science bent isn't one of them.
Trump-haters supported the retraction of the bogus study showing HCQ increased death rates.
Outside of that, the science has been pretty mixed. There are no gold-standard studies proving effectiveness yet. The Trump-haters are correct to be ambivalent about HCQ.
The great thing about subscribing to HN via RSS is that you can see all the content that made it to the front page (as this post did), and was subsequently censored by leftist definitely-not-fascists
Does anyone know if there any reasonably effective medications, yet (with sources)? Plasma therapy is the only majorly effective therapy I am aware of, at present. Would be interesting to read more on any promising treatments (aside from the Oxford vaccine success story).
I've heard Remdesivir has some major positive effects... like cutting hospital stays by 20% or something like that, and mortality by a decent percent. But it probably needs some additional parts to a 'cocktail' to bring more deaths down closer to 0. I think we could probably get it closer to 10-20% of current death rates w/ the right treatments, but that takes time/studies/etc... I mean HIV while no vaccine is available they've pretty much cut back on death w/ azt/other combo's of drugs.
But it wasn't built in a day, I hope they do get treatments coming soon though, that also address long-term effects of covid and prevent some of those... cause that's my biggest worry, how this affects us all over time.
[+] [-] 1f60c|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ops_operator|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] schlipity|5 years ago|reply
I am referring, of course, to the medication hydroxychloroquine. When this inexpensive oral medication is given very early in the course of illness, before the virus has had time to multiply beyond control, it has shown to be highly effective, especially when given in combination with the antibiotics azithromycin or doxycycline and the nutritional supplement zinc.
[+] [-] giardini|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] api|5 years ago|reply
Political hyper-polarization and social media amplification of divisive content to drive "engagement" is making us all collectively lose our damn minds.
If Trump says the sky is blue, his followers mindlessly believe it and everyone else will mindlessly decide the sky must instead be green. If Trump says the sky is green, his followers will mindlessly believe it and everyone else will mindlessly revert to thinking the sky is blue. The effect of a personality like Trump and how people react to him is quite possibly worse than Trump himself.
Either HCQ works or it doesn't. Deciding that and deciding how best to use it if it does work is a job for scientists and doctors. If you are not a scientist, doctor, or otherwise guided by real data that you are qualified to evaluate, your opinion on this issue is not valid and you need to shut up. What Trump or some other media whoring ass clown does or does not believe is irrelevant and will probably change next week anyway. Neither Trump nor his detractors have a valid opinion on this issue (unless they are actual professionals).
/rant over
[+] [-] wycy|5 years ago|reply
Instead, the FDA publicly retracted it's authorization for the use of HCQ and said it did more harm than good, and so public sentiment solidified behind the idea that it was stupid all along. If the FDA hadn't done that and the treatment continued to prove effective, I think we would all generally be on board with it.
There are a lot of ways in which it turns out anti-Trumpers are exactly the same as Trump supporters, but the anti-science bent isn't one of them.
[+] [-] smt88|5 years ago|reply
Outside of that, the science has been pretty mixed. There are no gold-standard studies proving effectiveness yet. The Trump-haters are correct to be ambivalent about HCQ.
[+] [-] ops_operator|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bE9a3S5So8igd3|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] LyndsySimon|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lc0_stein|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|5 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] gremlinsinc|5 years ago|reply
But it wasn't built in a day, I hope they do get treatments coming soon though, that also address long-term effects of covid and prevent some of those... cause that's my biggest worry, how this affects us all over time.