My favorite part of the whole fiasco is the low quality medical books that Surgisphere was publishing on Amazon around 2008/2009 with reviews that impersonated big names in medicine. The company was founded in 2008, but it appears that data falsification is just their latest scam.
Look at how easily the original flawed pro-HCQ paper was bought into (edit: removed my false statement it was retracted - I think it was criticized by the publishing society of the journal, but not retracted.). Many people were treated with HCQ across the world and so far there is no evidence it did anything to help them.
An important lesson here about the limits of peer review and science. A lot depends on the original authors not being frauds or simply making mistakes as we’ve seen time and again with scandals.
1. Seems to be saying there isn’t currently a health risk posed by the continuing of their trial.
2. Says they tried using HCQ and PPE together and found health providers were catching the virus less. Nothing in the article attempts to break out whether HCQ or PPE was responsible for it - obviously it’s common sense that using PPE would reduce the risk of catching the virus.
This is hardly a truckload of evidence at all. Also the original study from France was about using HCQ for patients who had already caught the virus, not prophylactic use. HCQ proponents shift around between possible uses of the drug as it becomes clearer that there is a lack of evidence for one way to use it.
Could evidence be found in the future that the drug has some small beneficial effect? It’s possible - but what’s clear is that claims that it was a miracle cure are completely unfounded.
Yes, I guess I should have posted the other links apart from the French study. Apologies. There is also a massive ongoing study in India which is expected to post findings by July end.
Ongoing studies should continue and we can see if there is an provable effect, now that the claim of health danger has been discredited.
My guess right now is that at best it will be as effective as remdesivir, but really until an actual RCT is conducted there is no proof either way.
The only thing I’m sure of it isn’t a “100%” cure as was touted by some politicians since if so, that would be obvious by now as the drug has been tried since January/February and yet patients treated with it are still dying.
> My guess right now is that at best it will be as effective as remdesivir, but really until an actual RCT is conducted there is no proof either way.
By now, it also matters when you give it. Lopinavir/ritonavir were called ineffective in NEJM, but a recent publication (in Lancet, ironically) says that perhaps (no placebo, blech) that given within 7 days of symptom onset they may be beneficial.
Remedisivir looks best in patients with moderate (requiring oxygen) but not critical disease.
And as for RCTs on HCQ, one of those (for post-exposure prophylaxis) from UMN should be apparently be published soon (no idea when or how: their PI is being, IMO rightly so, tight-lipped), and another is under review. A third one is ongoing.
Yeah the 1st study was deficient in several ways (low n, questionable criteria), which at one point, as a work in progress in an emergency situation was understandable, and was caught early by the community.
Another very different thing is to misrepresent the source of the data, or worse.
- NEJM and the Lancet published (and "peer reviewed") this article, or apparently just rubber stamped it.
- The company doesn't have any semblance of having the capability of doing the work it purports to do.
- The article has severe inconsistencies, for example, do you really have data on 98k hospitalized patients? http://freerangestats.info/blog/2020/05/30/implausible-healt...
- The company apparently was founded in 2008 but no data from them was used in any peer-reviewed journal until this year. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/jun/03/covid-19-surgi...
And governments and the WHO bought this, hook line and sinker?