CNN: British PM Boris Johnson is being moved to intensive care as a spokesperson for the PM says his condition “has worsened and, on the advice of his medical team, he has been moved to the Intensive Care Unit at the hospital.”
Not good…
I read it now. Thanks.
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Thanks to the person posting the Sermo report.
It’s interesting parsing the data in it. There is one question in Part 5, asked of doctors who have treated COVID19 patients:
"Of the medications you have personally prescribed or have seen used, please indicate which ones are most effective:”
[finding] 37% of physicians who have treated COVID-19 patients believe Hydroxychloroquine is the most effective therapy of a list of 15 options.
Which indicates that 63% of physicians don’t rate is as the most effective drug, if I’m reading that right. But it’s more complicated than that. 23% of U.S. doctors rate is as the most effective therapy as compared to 62% of physicians in Italy and Spain. As I read it, 580 American doctors answered the question, and 671 Italian and Spanish doctors answered it, so the numbers aren’t too different, just widely different views on the drug.
In the rest of Europe 37% of doctors (827 of them?) rate Hydroxychloroquine as the most effective drug. Nearly the same amount of doctors say Acetaminophen (common name Tylenol) is just about as effective as Hydroxychloroquine as therapy.
I may be reading this analysis wrong. Anyone else want to take a look? There was a doctor on here last week. Maybe he can parse the data in the report more accurately.
That’s @WillyJP. But read Derek Lowe’s take on hydrochloroquine. He’s a chemist working in Big Pharma with a long-standing and very highly reputed blog. He cuts through the fog with brutal clarity.
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I could add nothing consequential to that excellent Lowe article about Hydroxychloroquin.
He explains very, very well why double-blinded, randomized studies comparing the drug with a placebo are so crucial to establishing the precise role for this drug in treating COVID-19.
Meanwhile, there is enough positive evidence to both justify such a trial AND allow attending physicians, informed by the precautions known to be important, to PRESCRIBE the drug for individual patients.
Frankly, it mystifies me why the media dwells so much on this drug. It’s available, its prescription is allowed at the physician’s discretion, studies are urgently underway. If your doctor thinks you, or your mother, need it, and thinks it’s safe in your case, you can and will get it. So STFU and, as one commenter said one the Lowe article, let the adults get on with their work!
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The paper is not on COVID and hydrochloroquine. It’s a survey. As far as your interpretation of the data goes, the discrepancy might have something to do with the majority of the doctors reporting haven’t treated a COVID-19 patient, and the ones that have tend to be overseas where hydroxychloroquine has been in use as a prophylactic for longer. There is a different tort process overseas and malpractice suits for off-label medicine usage are not the issue they are in the US.
I’m not sure what website you went to. Sermo is a forum for doctors/medical professionals. They have over 800,000 verified doctors participating. https://www.sermo.com/about/
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This link below is from March 20th and shows data based mostly based outside the US as far as I can tell. Does anyone know of an article that has more recent data including what’s going on in the US?
Specifically, data similar to this:
“among people aged 49 or younger, only about 0.2% of those who contracted the disease died, compared to 14.8% of those who were 80 and older.”
And this:
“more than 80% experienced only mild symptoms. Almost 14% were classed as severe cases”
Day after day, the salesman turned president has encouraged coronavirus patients to try hydroxychloroquine with all of the enthusiasm of a real estate developer.
If hydroxychloroquine becomes an accepted treatment, several pharmaceutical companies stand to profit, including shareholders and senior executives with connections to the president. Mr. Trump himself has a small personal financial interest in Sanofi, the French drugmaker that makes Plaquenil, the brand-name version of hydroxychloroquine.
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No, I don’t say it…
Folks, none of this is a surprise. Hydroxychloroquine was approved in the US in 1955, and its side effects are well known. It is on the WHO List of Essential Medicines. It was prescribed five million times in the US in 2017, and I’ll warrant few of those scrips were for its primary use as an antimalarial. It’s the first-line treatment for SLE (Systematic Lupus Erythematosis, or Lupus).
Of particular concern right now is its again well-known interaction with various drugs that will often be present in incoming patients.
Whoa whoa whoa… Don’t get in the way of a good anti-Trump narrative. Like the person who drank pool cleaner “cuz Orange man saiiiid”
Trust me, I think his brand of anti-science is doing desperate harm and I’m sure the side effects were unknown to him when he started touting his “feeling” about this “game-changer”. If he ends up dead with a syringe stuck in his eye I’m sure it will be Dr Fauci or Dr. Birx who ends up in a rubber room somewhere.
Yep.
Burying Corona victims in NY public lands, unbelievable and sad. A grim development, like in the times of the plague.
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He said, she said.
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Love how fake news spreads faster than covid.
What’s the R0 on fake news I wonder…
A hundred maybe? Millions for a “super spreader”.
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All that is covered at length in the NYT article that @Dutchie posted. He may have been a bit hasty in his reading.
