I think the issue is how was it proven back then? There are a lot of people promoting ideas, some of which will eventually get clinical backing that they are correct.
Prior to studies being done, how do we evaluate who is a quack and who is correct? There is a lot of harm promoting quack ideas during a pandemic. Based on reputation? Twitter followers? Their passion?
I do not believe anyone censored research and scientific literature that was mainstream nor did they say they can not try to get your theories proven, rather they were basically saying do can not claim you have the truth if there is nothing solid backing you up. Basically skipping showing your work (e.g. peer review), and just saying you have the answer.
I would argue that anyone who had a solution to Covid should rush to get it published in a reputable journal -- because that is how science works. You do not go and make YouTubes first promoting it as the cure first.
Did Steven even have a role in this paper or are these professionals operating completely independently of him? So Steven didn't even bother to make this mainstream? Too much work?
Was it specifically because of this one claim, or because of his claims that hydroxychloroquine works and that COVID vaccines are toxic? I think you're doing a disservice by downplaying his history surrounding COVID.
To be clear, the researchers kept doing research and progressing. Whether some layman could tout it, mixing their advocacy with a myriad of disproved cures (along with anti-vax disinformation), had positively zero bearing on what they were doing, and if anything is a massive distraction.
Talking about something by sharing a Facebook post or posting a YouTube video or even HN comment has a negligible to negative effect on actual efforts.
Kirsch happened to spoon a lot of, well, BS and absolutely unwarranted conclusions and certainty. This is always harmful, and is probably what was banned.
American history is littered with medical salesmen touting miracle cures to desperate ill people. Would you prefer our modern communication mediums be saturated with their pitches or do we want to wait until there is a reasonable scientific consensus before unleashing re-engagement algorithms?
> Was more or less harm done by stifling this information?
I dont think the target audience for youtube videos is other researchers and doctors. Pretty sure nothing of value was lost by it not being on youtube. The only thing this would have done is rile up people.
I'm not super familiar with how to interpret the statistics in the paper, am I correct in understanding that it showed a 5% reduction in hospitalizations?
And it seems there was no significant effect on death?
If someone knows how to read this, can you chime in?
This is fascinating, but for people who already have a medical history of ITP, it might be a bad idea, as this drug has known anti-platelet activity. Good for "normal" people to avoid blood clots, but bad for ITP people who are trying to keep from losing platelets.
I wouldn’t touch flovoxamine or any other antidepressent (or antipsychotic for that matter) with a 10 foot stick.
If you want a good read about how the **y the US healthcare system is, this is a very worthwhile read. Ironically the author is the screenwriter of “Girl, Interrupted” and the story she writes is about how her son got screwed by the US healthcare system and is titled “Boy, Interrupted”. It also shows you how desperate people get for specialized care, and will shell out unfathomable amounts of money for “treatment” at sketchy places: https://www.madinamerica.com/2021/06/boy-interrupted-a-story...
K
Ironically, the last straw for me, when it came to living in America was my diagnosis of akathisia (just like the linked story), which is 1000x worse than it sounds. I have severe depression and I had been taking my medications as prescribed. Because of my taking these medications, I developed severe akathisia. Literally, before all hell broke loose from the severe akathisia (of which I likely had to varying degrees for years) my highly respected neurologist in movement disorders immediately wrote a scathing report of my situation with the diagnosis. He also gave a ton of recommendations. He also wrote letters to all of my doctors. He did this all within an hour and took the situation extremely seriously.
Unfortunately, even though he is technically a high powered doctor, the US healthcare system has taken a tremendous amount of power away from doctors in general. So a scathing write up in my medical record plus letters to all of my doctors (with recommendations) was all he could really do for me. I literally ended up in the ER 6 times in a week, with improper help. I kept on being discharged over and over again without any further help and even got in to trouble with the law multiple times.
One time, after being drugged with Ativan (a benzodiazepine) and Ketamine (a general anesthetic) in the ER, from which I had been discharged. I had called my mother and she was going to pick me up from the hospital. She was well on her way for picking me up.
Honestly, I thought I was just waiting outside on the sidewalk right next to the ER, for my mother, but something very wrong had happened. All of the sudden I see a cop car pull up about 30-40 feet away from me and they were headed my way to talk to me.
Obviously the number one rule is to never talk to the police under any conditions. Traffic stops are a good time to practice
Mm that, by the way. The best thing you can do is say “no comment, I need to talk to my lawyer first.” Anyways I was drugged up to the extreme so it was not like I was not talking and running my mouth to both of the cops observing the situation.
Obviously I had caused some sort of public disturbance and somebody had called the cops on me and clearly I should have never been discharged from the hospital. Honestly, I have no idea how, when, or even where the public disturbance occurred (obviously this is public record but it is not healthy for me to investigate the situation further).
Anyways, after the cops talked to me, they said that an “emergency detention order” was being issued and that I was going to be forced to get treatment at the **hole hospital which had improperly discharged me after being hella ativaned and ketamined up.
Long story short, I had 3 interactions with the cops in 1 week. Prior to that I had only had 2 interactions with the police in my adult life (+14 years). Both were traffic stops, but neither were for moving traffic violations (burnt out headlight and expired registration during COVID-19). I was tremendously lucky that I was never charged with anything over that week from hell, and the cops managed to see that something was “off”. Anyways, like in the above link (excellent storytelling by the way so it is a worthwhile read), there are common denominators that I share with the writer’s son.
I am a dual US|European Union (Croatian) citizen and I fled the US after the final hospital trip (from hell actually...it was the worst hospital trip of all time and I am hardcore chronically ill just in general) for Croatia exactly 21 days later (I had to obtain legal documents).
Because of my training in electrical engineering, which I am profoundly fortunate to have, I do LORETA (technically sLORETA) neurofeedback training completely on my own to help heal my brain, just like the person in that story.
Anyways, there is much more to the story that is better not put in writing. Just know that there is nothing that will bring me back to the USA.
Your rant isn't relevant here. Everyone knows that Fluvoxamine has some negative side effects and risks. As a potential COVID-19 treatment it would be used for only a few days during the acute infection phase. Not as an ongoing treatment like for mental health conditions.
There are plenty of people taking fluvoxamine already, which acts as a natural experiment. After a few thousand hospitalizations, this effect size would have been obvious (ie. March 2020). At that point, a double-blind study could have been run, which (if done in a city with many infections) could have given results within weeks.
What bit of health research dropped the ball on this?
Wouldn't this sort of "obvious" link require tracking every patients entire history? Couldn't it be lost in other confounding factors? This seems like it would require a lot of good data and then strong analysis chops to pull that pattern out.
People have indeed been saying that this might work, how it would work, that it appeared that it did work, and that it urgently needed studying for a quite some time.
There was also indeed a French observational study that showed that people on SSRIs did notably better among those hospitalized for COVID. And a few other smaller studies.
I’d suggest looking towards Dr. Angela Reiersen and Dr. Farid Jalali and see if their words haven’t been making consistent sense for a while now.
Universal health care and centralization of patient records would probably be required to do what you’re talking about.
If scientists actually could mine everyone’s data easily it would be a lot easier to do stuff like this. Privacy laws and the fact that so much of the medical system is disconnected from itself get in the way - it’s normal for every new doctor to ask the same questions again because there’s no reliable way to share information.
[+] [-] hhw3h|4 years ago|reply
That content got banned from YouTube.
Was more or less harm done by stifling this information?
In the desire to drive official therapeutics and vaccines was this potentially not surfaced as fast as it could have been?
I'm not sure. It's good food for thought though.
[+] [-] bhouston|4 years ago|reply
Prior to studies being done, how do we evaluate who is a quack and who is correct? There is a lot of harm promoting quack ideas during a pandemic. Based on reputation? Twitter followers? Their passion?
I do not believe anyone censored research and scientific literature that was mainstream nor did they say they can not try to get your theories proven, rather they were basically saying do can not claim you have the truth if there is nothing solid backing you up. Basically skipping showing your work (e.g. peer review), and just saying you have the answer.
I would argue that anyone who had a solution to Covid should rush to get it published in a reputable journal -- because that is how science works. You do not go and make YouTubes first promoting it as the cure first.
Did Steven even have a role in this paper or are these professionals operating completely independently of him? So Steven didn't even bother to make this mainstream? Too much work?
[+] [-] SketchySeaBeast|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] defaultname|4 years ago|reply
https://www.technologyreview.com/2021/10/05/1036408/silicon-...
To be clear, the researchers kept doing research and progressing. Whether some layman could tout it, mixing their advocacy with a myriad of disproved cures (along with anti-vax disinformation), had positively zero bearing on what they were doing, and if anything is a massive distraction.
Talking about something by sharing a Facebook post or posting a YouTube video or even HN comment has a negligible to negative effect on actual efforts.
[+] [-] AnthonBerg|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] omegaworks|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tayo42|4 years ago|reply
I dont think the target audience for youtube videos is other researchers and doctors. Pretty sure nothing of value was lost by it not being on youtube. The only thing this would have done is rile up people.
[+] [-] radu_floricica|4 years ago|reply
We as a civilization moved pretty slow on Covid.
[+] [-] Factorium|4 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] didibus|4 years ago|reply
And it seems there was no significant effect on death?
If someone knows how to read this, can you chime in?
[+] [-] ahazred8ta|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] s1artibartfast|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Vrondi|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] beebmam|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ericmay|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] disabled|4 years ago|reply
If you want a good read about how the **y the US healthcare system is, this is a very worthwhile read. Ironically the author is the screenwriter of “Girl, Interrupted” and the story she writes is about how her son got screwed by the US healthcare system and is titled “Boy, Interrupted”. It also shows you how desperate people get for specialized care, and will shell out unfathomable amounts of money for “treatment” at sketchy places: https://www.madinamerica.com/2021/06/boy-interrupted-a-story... K Ironically, the last straw for me, when it came to living in America was my diagnosis of akathisia (just like the linked story), which is 1000x worse than it sounds. I have severe depression and I had been taking my medications as prescribed. Because of my taking these medications, I developed severe akathisia. Literally, before all hell broke loose from the severe akathisia (of which I likely had to varying degrees for years) my highly respected neurologist in movement disorders immediately wrote a scathing report of my situation with the diagnosis. He also gave a ton of recommendations. He also wrote letters to all of my doctors. He did this all within an hour and took the situation extremely seriously.
Unfortunately, even though he is technically a high powered doctor, the US healthcare system has taken a tremendous amount of power away from doctors in general. So a scathing write up in my medical record plus letters to all of my doctors (with recommendations) was all he could really do for me. I literally ended up in the ER 6 times in a week, with improper help. I kept on being discharged over and over again without any further help and even got in to trouble with the law multiple times. One time, after being drugged with Ativan (a benzodiazepine) and Ketamine (a general anesthetic) in the ER, from which I had been discharged. I had called my mother and she was going to pick me up from the hospital. She was well on her way for picking me up. Honestly, I thought I was just waiting outside on the sidewalk right next to the ER, for my mother, but something very wrong had happened. All of the sudden I see a cop car pull up about 30-40 feet away from me and they were headed my way to talk to me. Obviously the number one rule is to never talk to the police under any conditions. Traffic stops are a good time to practice Mm that, by the way. The best thing you can do is say “no comment, I need to talk to my lawyer first.” Anyways I was drugged up to the extreme so it was not like I was not talking and running my mouth to both of the cops observing the situation. Obviously I had caused some sort of public disturbance and somebody had called the cops on me and clearly I should have never been discharged from the hospital. Honestly, I have no idea how, when, or even where the public disturbance occurred (obviously this is public record but it is not healthy for me to investigate the situation further). Anyways, after the cops talked to me, they said that an “emergency detention order” was being issued and that I was going to be forced to get treatment at the **hole hospital which had improperly discharged me after being hella ativaned and ketamined up. Long story short, I had 3 interactions with the cops in 1 week. Prior to that I had only had 2 interactions with the police in my adult life (+14 years). Both were traffic stops, but neither were for moving traffic violations (burnt out headlight and expired registration during COVID-19). I was tremendously lucky that I was never charged with anything over that week from hell, and the cops managed to see that something was “off”. Anyways, like in the above link (excellent storytelling by the way so it is a worthwhile read), there are common denominators that I share with the writer’s son. I am a dual US|European Union (Croatian) citizen and I fled the US after the final hospital trip (from hell actually...it was the worst hospital trip of all time and I am hardcore chronically ill just in general) for Croatia exactly 21 days later (I had to obtain legal documents). Because of my training in electrical engineering, which I am profoundly fortunate to have, I do LORETA (technically sLORETA) neurofeedback training completely on my own to help heal my brain, just like the person in that story. Anyways, there is much more to the story that is better not put in writing. Just know that there is nothing that will bring me back to the USA.
[+] [-] nradov|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] londons_explore|4 years ago|reply
There are plenty of people taking fluvoxamine already, which acts as a natural experiment. After a few thousand hospitalizations, this effect size would have been obvious (ie. March 2020). At that point, a double-blind study could have been run, which (if done in a city with many infections) could have given results within weeks.
What bit of health research dropped the ball on this?
[+] [-] SketchySeaBeast|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] AnthonBerg|4 years ago|reply
There was also indeed a French observational study that showed that people on SSRIs did notably better among those hospitalized for COVID. And a few other smaller studies.
I’d suggest looking towards Dr. Angela Reiersen and Dr. Farid Jalali and see if their words haven’t been making consistent sense for a while now.
[+] [-] walterbell|4 years ago|reply
https://covid19criticalcare.com/covid-19-protocols/math-plus...
https://www.treatearly.org/fluvoxamine
[+] [-] javagram|4 years ago|reply
If scientists actually could mine everyone’s data easily it would be a lot easier to do stuff like this. Privacy laws and the fact that so much of the medical system is disconnected from itself get in the way - it’s normal for every new doctor to ask the same questions again because there’s no reliable way to share information.