By: Richard J. Wright
VirtualWright.com | COVID-19
The “experts,” especially Dr. Fauci, keep telling us that the actual positive clinical results many doctors around the country and around the world are reporting for a medicine “cocktail” of hydroxychloroquine, plus azithromycin, plus zinc, are just “anecdotal.” We need large scale, randomized, double-blind, controlled studies in order to determine its effectiveness as a curative treatment for patients suffering the mortal threat of the rapid advancement of Covid-19.
So, let’s see. You’re in the hospital with a high fever, horrible cough and having a very hard time breathing. Your blood oxygen saturation level is dangerously low. If things don’t get better you might very quickly end up in the ICU and if you get put on a ventilator your odds are not good at all. Dr. Fauci comes up to you and asks if you would like to be a part of this wonderful scientific study by which we will be able to determine whether or not this drug combination is effective in treating the disease. And it’s the only way because we have no FDA approved therapies. Sure, sign me up!
But do you know that you might be part of the ever so important control group which will not receive any medication at all, just a sugar pill, a placebo? “Double-blind” means that neither you nor the doctors treating you will know who gets the medication and who does not. Only the people who designed the test will know and you will never meet them nor they, you. Are you willing to die for science?
You don’t have to. These kinds of experiments are great in principle but completely immoral when it comes to deadly diseases. And they are unnecessary. We have plenty of people around the world who have had to be admitted into hospitals, ICU’s, put on ventilators and died. We have a lot of information about the risk factors associated with age and underlying conditions. If a drug is anything more than just slightly effective, all we have to do is statistically compare the outcomes of people getting the drug to the outcomes we have seen based on age and underlying conditions.
That is what front line doctors are doing and they are reporting that there is clear and, sometimes, profound clinical improvement in many, many patients, especially when this combination of medicines is administered earlier rather than later. Some of these are highly respected, practicing infectious disease experts. And we’ve had decades of experience in prescribing these drugs so there is no uncertainty as to their safety.
Dr. Michael Erdek, associate professor at the Johns Hopkins Berman Institute of Bioethics and School of Medicine writes concerning one of earliest of these studies (which was controlled, by the way) by eminent French researchers:
It is ironic that the authors of this study state, ‘For ethical reasons and because our first results are so significant and evident we decide to share our findings with the medical community, given the urgent need for an effective drug against SARS-CoV-2 in the current pandemic context.’ The true ethical responsibility of researchers is to produce and to publish data and subsequent recommendations yielded as a function of a robust methodology and stringent review. Perhaps some investigators may be altruistically motivated in an effort to rapidly disseminate hopeful conclusions. Nevertheless, the responsibility we hold to our patients and, especially in the setting of the current pandemic, to greater society at large depends on good judgment and fiduciary concern rather than on haste to demonstrate beneficial outcomes.
Amazing.
The study being criticized was small but the results were so profound as to be impossible to dismiss. Bioethicist Erdek thinks ethics is about “robust methodology and stringent review” and not about saving lives.
How many anecdotes does it take to change a light bulb?
If the light bulb is Dr. Fauci’s mind (and others like him) then I’m afraid the answer is infinity.
Richard J. Wright, a chemist and information technology specialist, has been tracking the official Covid-19 (Corona-SARS) data and assessing our government’s disease progression modeling, plus responses, at virtualwright.com.
Hat Tip: Gulag Bound
More people will die from the shutdown of the economy/food supply, and suicide from despair than from the conditions presented as a “virus”.
I find Zinc to be slightly nauseating so I follow with fruit. Zinc can’t be stored but it’s function is vital. I take about 10 mg and will just do 30days stints.
Dr Didier Raoult who became noted during this crisis by publishing the results of his first small test where he combined hydroxychloroquine with azithromycin as a new Covid-19 treatment has just released the results of his latest test where he has 1061 patients. The most basic result is he saw 5 deaths.
Perhaps we should do some simple math since the “so called experts in the medical profession” still seem to me mathematically challenged.
5 deaths out of 1061 patients is 0.47%
As of today France has recorded 129,654 confirmed cases and 13,832 deaths.
This is a death rate of 10.67% per confirmed case.
Currently the same random population in France shows a death rate that is 22 times as large in the population who was not treated compared to the 1061 in this test that were treated. This incredible result is the definition of statistically significant.
For those asking for a “control group” as some magical requirement for statistical significance in their rigid illogical and unthinking brain, I recommend they use 1061 of the 129,654 confirmed cases which has resulted in the 13,832 dead French who are available in the morgues of France. They represent a truly random group and the only significant difference in their outcome compared to this treated group is they were blocked from a treatment the Chinese and Koreans have been dispensing FOR MONTHS and have published generally positive if not “PERFECT” results.
I personally could not care less if Dr Raoult is arrogant, or labeled a quack by other self important quacks during any previous studies. I only care about results of any useful treatment to reduce the suffering from this deadly virus. This treatment has never been called a cure for this disease, it is a treatment when used early can limit the number of people who eventually DIE. This is not a study on the latest treatment for hair loss, or skin dryness, this is an attempt to have less DEATH. Any fear mongering about a drug which has been safely prescribed for 70 years is the mindless blathering of a fool. I don’t see any indication this drug came close to KILLING 10.67% of the 1061 patients who took if for the short term of this test. We would expect 10.67% of these patients would be DEAD using the average death rate from the rest of France. What is so difficult to understand between 0.47% and 10.67% DEAD.
At this point anyone who is blocking this treatment should be removed due to there being only 2 possible reasons for their obstruction. Either they are grossly incompetent, or they are criminally blocking a viable safe treatment for financial or professional benefit.
A sampling of the valid studies to date:
French Study of 1,000+ Patients Including Seniors See 98% Success Rate with Hydroxychloroquine-Azithromycin Regimen