This article first appeared at ProPublica. ProPublica is a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative newsroom. Sign up for The Big Story newsletter to receive stories like this one in your inbox.
April 10, 2020 will mark a full year since Kirstjen Nielsen resigned as Secretary of Homeland Security.
Not only has the position been formally vacant for the past 355 days, but there’s been no nominee and no suggestion that one is forthcoming.
DHS, which houses FEMA, has an essential role to play in crisis response.
One only hopes that a drug will soon stop Covid-19 from killing people. That said, it is criminal negligence for the Covidiot-in-Chief to play TV doctor because not only he graduated from Trump University of Trickery, Thievery and Quackery…it will give people who took those drugs complacency not knowing whether they are Covid-19 spreaders or not without testing!
We do know thanks to Trump,people with Lupus are having a hard time find their medication.
“But the drug is already running out for people with lupus, a disorder of the immune system, who rely on it to stay well. Shortages are being reported from the UK to Thailand to France. India, which manufactures the raw ingredient, has banned all exports of the chemical to safeguard its own supplies and recommended all health workers to take the drug to protect themselves from the virus.”
1… trump inc has a financial stake in it;
2… it’s bullshit and just another fraud being perpetrated on a frightened and desperate public, and those promoting it have a connection to trump/kushner
If hydroxychloroquine turns out to have prophylactic efficacy, we will never hear the end of it from Trump. Think good thoughts about that pussycat!
Anyone here who gets sick from this virus now will be begging for those treatments.
In the meantime wash your hands
One small study in France seemed to suggest that hydroxychloroquine, combined with azithromycin, could work as a treatment for COVID-19.
That study has largely been debunked (or dismissed) as a very poorly done study for a host of reasons, not the least of which is azithromycin is an antibacterial, not an antiviral, the study did not have a control group, they removed patients from the study’s results and sometimes guessed on the data itself.
Any article mentioning this “study” really should note that it hasn’t been peer reviewed and so far does not provide actual evidence.
2 Notes:
High doses of HCQ or CQ have been reported as lethal in COVID-19 patients.
there’s a theory that because they’re taking these anti-malaria drugs in Africa, it may actually be one of the reasons why the infection rate is low in Africa.
That’s a theory. Another theory for the low Africa rates is lack of travel, and more importantly lack of testing.
Remdesivir is in hospital trials in Boston. Unfortunately a friend is sick and in the trial. He seems to be improving. One more hopeful drug.
Trump is the most intelligent person in the world because he drinks Dos Equis not that virus causing Corona so he knows his medince.
I first heard about chloroquine being effective 3-4 weeks ago, and then bought four bottles of tonic water (quinine, don’t you know) because it was on sale at the grocery store. The day after, I read another article (which I can’t find now) that basically said that chloroquine was a sort of Lucy-with-the-football in terms of effectiveness: it has shown great promise in vitro against a number of diseases (just as in vitro results drove much of the buzz about it in China versus Covid-19), but this promise has rarely panned out in human trials. Here’s hoping it’s finally found its time to shine again. In the meantime, I’m glad I’m fond of tonic water.
Regarding Hydroxychloroquine treatment:
Interesting though that Africa is China’s leading trade partner & one presumes
much travel & contact. One would expect on this basis much earlier spread in
African countries.
No these criticisms are invalid. Azithromycins been shown antiviral
properties & also the purpose is also to prevent subsequent infections.
The main observation in these studies is that the virus eliminates much quicker
in these treatments. There was a control group, patients from another hospital.
In a pandemic journals are publishing many articles without full peer-review
so that the medical community can get information faster.
You might be interested to know that the SalK polio vaccine was nationalized based
on just a few observational cases & no peer-review.
Check out pubmed for most recent articles. Don’t rely on talking heads and so
called “experts” who often have an axe to grind.
Anecdotal reports suggest that these drugs may offer some benefit in the treatment of hospitalized COVID-19 patients. Clinical trials are needed to provide scientific evidence that these treatments are effective
Anecdotal reports used to say that nicotine in cigarettes could calm the nerves and be a health way to mitigate stress.
if this lunacy is to be permitted - at the very least - there should be a mandatory patient registry - it is off-label use - you want it - you have to be in the files of documented use - and track all critical patient info details - AND AGREE TO RETURN FOR FOLLOW UP - so that at some point there can be some useful information gathered from this Mosh-Pit Medicine circus
We also know that the data of the French “study” by Raoult et al. is not only small, but sketchy. We also know that Raoult has a track record as a data fabricator who denies not only climate change, but also the power of double-blind randomized control trials as the gold standard of clinical research.
Salk polio vaccine - was not “nationalized based on a few observational cases”
… you are incorrect please review the history of the lengthy battle to neutralize this disease
the polio situation is emphatically not substantially analogous to COVID-19 - yes they are both viruses - but the situations are dramatically different in a multitude of ways
In 1954 a massive controlled field trial was launched, sponsored by the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis. Almost two million U.S. children between the ages of six and nine participated. In some areas of the country half of these “Polio Pioneers” received the vaccine, while half received a placebo. In other areas of the country children who did not receive any vaccine were carefully observed. On April 12, 1955, Thomas Francis, Salk’s mentor and the director of the trial, reported that the vaccine was safe, potent, and 90% effective in protecting against paralytic poliomyelitis.
In order to conduct these massive trials Salk’s vaccine needed to be produced on a large scale. Accomplishing this required the assistance of the pharmaceutical industry, and well-known companies like Eli Lilly and Company, Wyeth Laboratories, and Parke, Davis and Company agreed to make the new vaccine.
Another big problem of people using chloroquine or any other drug in a random off-label fashion is that we all lose precious data. The randomized studies give us some answers we can work with. Anecdotes give us bupkis.
We saw this kind of thing before during the AIDS crisis, when a lot of people were throwing medications around to see what might help, but way too often without bothering to report or even record crucial data. So anyone trying to replicate their results had to start at ground zero and lose months of time from patients’ lives.