Hydroxychloroquine Lancet study of 96,000 Covid patients ignores Zinc, wasn’t randomized, has 12% death rate

A new study came out last night in the Lancet which is being used to call for the end of doctors using Choloroquine and Hydroxychloroquine to treat Covid patients without them being enrolled in a clinical trial. Some of the claims about “no chance of any benefit” seem a bit premature given the limits of this kind of study:

Superficially, it looks large and comprehensive but there are three obvious problems with it —

1. It ignores zinc entirely. There is not even a mention of the essential mineral, despite Chloroquine being a well known zinc ionophone (something that pumps a mineral across a cell membrane) and intracellular zinc being identified as a useful anti-viral.

2. It’s not randomized. If doctors are prescribing these drugs to sicker patients or patients with a certain (unknown) genetic risk factor that selection bias (there we go again) could neutralize the entire result. We just don’t know.

3. These were sick people. The total mortality in this whole group was almost 12%. This trial tells us nothing about using these drugs as preventative measures in mild or moderate cases. It doesn’t tell us whether people had symptoms for a week before getting to hospital — and presumably if people saw a doctor early on, used HCQ and zinc, and then didn’t go to hospital at all (because they recovered) then they won’t be counted at all.

So this trial successfully filters and removes the success stories (whatever they are) from early HCQ treatment.

Even Donald Trump knows that HCQ is meant to be used with Zinc, so it is surprising that the medical researchers did not even mention it. Or in this politicized new world of medicine, perhaps it isn’t?

They obtained data from 671 hospitals in many countries and control for obvious factors, and a stack of co-morbidities and demographics. Two thirds of the patients are from the US. They only include patients that are diagnosed, and start one or the other chloroquine type drug within 48 hours of diagnosis (but that may be quite some time after they first got sick). The groups are split into HCQ, or CQ, paired with or without Azithromycin (Az). But both the antimalarial and the antibiotic are known to affect something called the QT interval. Obviously patients who have long QT’s or heart arrhythmia would be at higher risk. Docs would know.

We note that HCQ is not a big money-spinner for large pharmaceutical companies, being an old cheap out-of-patent drug, and that some of these authors do work sometimes with Big Pharma:

 Authors Declaration of interests

MRM reports personal fees from Abbott, Medtronic, Janssen, Mesoblast, Portola, Bayer, Baim Institute for Clinical Research, NupulseCV, FineHeart, Leviticus, Roivant, and Triple Gene. SSD is the founder of Surgisphere Corporation. FR has been paid for time spent as a committee member for clinical trials, advisory boards, other forms of consulting, and lectures or presentations; these payments were made directly to the University of Zurich and no personal payments were received in relation to these trials or other activities. ANP declares no competing interests.

Acknowledgments
The development and maintenance of the Surgical Outcomes Collaborative database was funded by Surgisphere Corporation (Chicago, IL, USA)

 

 

 

 

 Doctors seem unimpressed

If comments under the Medpage version of this story are any gauge, it suggests many doctors in the US are unmoved by this study, or are even cynically disillusioned.

Vincent Tedone MD

This article is like rowing a boat with a pool cue.

HCQ + Zn use is indicated only in early cases or as a prophylactic.

Big Pharma influence is all over this.

Robert Dunn

Why they continue to promote these studies which have nothing to do with the proper use of HCQ in helping Covid-19 patients in incredible.

Until they do a study which addresses the use of HCQ in the early/mid stage of the infection, PRIOR to hospitalization, these studies do nothing to clear the air or the virus.

There simply is way too much evidence of doctor/patient treatments that have had dramatic cures of the progression of the disease to have gone this far in time without a definitive and trustworthy analysis of the proper use of HCQ in fighting Covid-19.

Iggy Dalrymple

Hydroxychloroquine has 2 major defects:
1- Trump touted it.
2- HCQ is off patent.

Retrospective studies are ideal for agenda driven “researchers” because they allow cherry-picking the data.

Samuel Rivera

Another garbage, politically motivated study that does not answer the question we physicians want to know. Is HCQ alone or in combination treatment effective prophylaxis or early treatment for COVID 19? All these “analyses” of very sick folks LATE IN THE COVID game are clearly biased against HCQ from the start based on what we know are the mechanisms by which HCQ might help. The attempt to sabotage science is the most disgusting thing I have witnessed in my entire medical career and I am saddened that even physicians have taken sides. By the way, when they talk about more arrhythmias, I want to know exactly what they are talking about- is it more PAC’s, PVC’s. What I really want to know is the incidence of sustained VT or V-fib and whether these arrythmias had any clinical impact at all. The degree of biased interpretation is also very sad!

Obviously, we still need good studies on these drugs to be sure of anything. If Hydroxycholoroquine is useful in a preventative way, we should already see that effect in countries and groups who use it regularly — like Lupus patients or people with Rheumatoid arthritis or who live in malaria-zones. It seems strange there isn’t more information on that available, but perhaps some readers here have seen some?

But most of all, we need to depoliticize medical research somehow…

REFERENCES

Mehra MR, et al “Hydroxychloroquine or chloroquine with or without a macrolide for treatment of COVID-19: a multinational registry analysis” Lancet 2020; DOI: 10.1016/S0140-6736(20)31180-6.

https://www.thelancet.com/lancet/article/s0140673620311806

9.6 out of 10 based on 85 ratings

194 comments to Hydroxychloroquine Lancet study of 96,000 Covid patients ignores Zinc, wasn’t randomized, has 12% death rate

  • #

    Research of all kinds can’t be depoliticalized until the medical community identifies the brain disease that has infected the political left deluding them into thinking that their subjective, and often wrong, positions are the only valid ones and that you’re a bad human if you think otherwise. This is the underlying problem, where TDS is just a symptom, and something similar would have manifested if any other Republican had beaten their anointed one, moreover; this escalation of hate by the left is not specific to the US.

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      OriginalSteve

      Its a deeper indicator of a spiritual and societal problem, IMHO…..

      The Left has been attempting to muzzle and shutdown religious worship for a while. Covid is also a juicy opportunity to further that agenda.

      If we dont push back hard now on the Lefts agressive control agenda of not just freedom of religion but also freedom of anything, the left will equip all your grandchildren with little red books……

      You know they will…

      [Please stay on topic, try not to get sidetracked]AD

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      • #
        Kalm Keith

        Steve.

        I worked in heavy industry for the first nine years of my working life and can say very strongly that the guiding force behind the operation of the business was the Christian ethic.

        My perception is that so much of the guiding force in the community was bounded by the same concepts of decency, obligation to neighbours and respect for law.

        To AD, thank you for your efforts in monitoring the blog and supporting its continuation.

        As to the relevance of Steve’s comment: I believe that the issue of ethics, as derived from the guidance provided by the religious background outlined above is crucial to the functioning of science.

        Without ethical models to follow in applying science we are lost.

        Religion, or more importantly Religious Ethics, is now basically absent from society and very little that passes for public government is useful or functional or in the best interests of taxpayers and citizens.

        I think Steve’s comment is highly relevant to the topic.

        KK

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    • #
      Orson

      Politicisation of science is not specific the US? Well, the Lancet is based in the UK, and didn’t AGW science get politicised first? So much that senior climatologist with 186 publications Judith Curry left the academic field? Why…yes.

      Could the crisis de jour simply be imitating other recent crisis mongering? Following a previous successful pattern of politicising science? Why…yes it could!

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      mark jones

      Sorry to jump on first post…Today, the WHO acts on this study and temporarily pulls HCQ from any research.

      Politics?

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  • #
    John Galt

    Every time I see a so-called study like this one I am more convinced that there IS a conspiracy behind the COVID-19 pandemic.
    I sincerely hope that the so-called scientists who published this rubbish [snip] are not allowed to take anything except the utter garbage that their masters in big pharma produce.
    Sorry, no zinc, no Vitamin D, no vitamin C, no hydroxychloroquine. Dance with the thieves that bought you, [Snip]AD

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  • #
    AnnieM

    In the US there has been a story about one woman in Wisconsin who got COVID-19 while taking hydroxychloroquine for Lupus. Over 5 million people in the US regularly take hydroxychloroquine for a variety of purposes partially because it was so safe before COVID-19 miraculously made it the most dangerous substance known to man and they could only find ONE person on it who got COVID-19??? No statement of how much she was taking (taking for “flare-ups” so maybe not taking it consistently?) nor any indication of her zinc levels. She did apparently spend time in the hospital but I’ve seen conflicting information on how long (5 days or 7 days). Not a lot of substance in the articles but lots of hyperbole. https://www.msn.com/en-us/health/medical/a-wisconsin-woman-with-lupus-has-taken-hydroxychloroquine-for-19-years-and-still-got-covid-19/ar-BB14qnpE

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  • #
    AnnieM

    [Duplicate]AD

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    • #
      TdeF

      “Over 5 million people in the US regularly take hydroxychloroquine”. Approved by the FDA, this cheap drug is not a killer, as the press would have us believe.

      So why is it suddenly so dangerous? It follows a common pattern. Big study, suspect logic, reputable journal. Therefore the study is true, except it contradicts everything we know to be true.

      And the motivation appears to be profit, billions in profit. The demonization of Donald Trump is a side benefit.

      The attack on Supreme Court nominee Kavanagh was by big pharma too. Absolutely no evidence and on National television to destroy the reputation of one man because he threatened the billions being made from the abortion drug RU486. And Professor Christine Blaisey Ford has made it the focus of her life’s work and income, but nothing was said about her commercial motivation.

      While patents and copyright and patent funded research have made the US great, once people start talking about ‘the science’, you flinch. The Chinese military may have created this monster, but some in America also see it as a huge political and profit opportunity.

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      • #
        TdeF

        And I read that US soldiers take 42,000 tablets a day. How can the Lancet claim it is so dangerous and the FDA not act?

        I saw the one line summary of this report and I am glad and not surprised at all that on closer examination it appears to be flawed, skewed to achieve the wanted result. Obviously deliberately.

        And President Tedros Adhonom says WHO are ‘working 24 hours a day’. So what? He has not explained why he assured the planet that Wuhan Flu was not infectious person to person and not a pandemic and that there was no need to closer borders. Even when the report from Taiwan said the exact reverse.

        That is why Climate Change and Wuhan Flu are so similar. Big money meeting political objectives, an unholy alliance of despots and dollars. As in the 1930s with the world’s biggest company Krupp in Germany backing Adolph in his plans to take over the world. The difference between Fascism and Communism used to be big business. It now aligns with communism too.

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        • #
          Bill In Oz

          TdeF this ‘research’ with hydroxychloroquine” is very similar to that which happened with Vitamin D3.
          A healing agent suddenly become labelled in the media as dangerous.

          PS In the 1970’s While in Malaysia for a a year I took hydroxychloroquine” each day as a malarial preventative. No ill effects whatsoever. It was an over the counter drug there then.

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          • #
            PeterPetrum

            When I was working in PNG and Fiji many, many years ago, I took hydroxychloquine as an anti malarial both before, during and after my stint in each country. Apart from the disgusting flavour – no adverse effects and no malaria!

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      • #
        Graeme No.3

        TdeF:

        If hydroxychloroquine (+zinc) was dangerous the MSM would all be calling on Trump to take it.

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  • #
    Richard Ilfeld

    It seems to me we have two problems.

    There are some scientists (and I don’t know if I should use one quote, two quotes or a /sarc tag) who simply do bad research.
    There are others who do decent science, throw in an obligatory nod nod wink wink climate change paragraph to get the grant, then
    are disgusted when a narrative driven press turns their summary into a false headline.

    Science may be able to police itself; and reality usually slaps it upside the head sooner or later.

    But I don’t know if there are any remaining popular journals of science that try to bring complex scientific work to us ordinary mortals that have not been politically contaminated.
    And substituting a narrative for science can kill people.

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  • #
    James Poulos

    It just seems to me that ‘Climate Science Methodology’ is now as infectious as the Coronavirus.

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  • #
    William Astley

    I completely and totally agree that we need to

    “But most of all, we need to depoliticize medical research somehow…

    The research has been done. We have the simple natural solution to covid and more than 60% of all significant diseases. The reason why we have not heard of the solution and why the solution is stopped, is 100% politics and money.

    Big Pharma controls the system at all levels. What we have discovered, while researching covid solutions, is the biggest scam in scientific history. The General Population Deficiencies’ scam will not be stopped by ‘depoliticizing’ medical ‘research’.

    An independent idiot could have come up with the amazing new medical strategy of correcting the general population’s deficiencies to reduce total country ‘health’ care expenditures.

    It is unbelievable, criminal (when people die due to preventable deficiencies that is criminal negligence) that 42% of the US general population and 82% of the US black population is ‘Vitamin’ D deficient and …. ….it has been shown that regardless of sex or age that ‘Vitamin’ D deficient people have a 20 times greater chance of dying from the covid virus than non ‘Vitamin’ D deficient people.

    People are dying and suffering for decades with diabetes, cancer, multiple sclerosis, and so on, because of ‘Vitamin’ D deficiency … and magnesium, and zinc deficiency. Correcting the US general population’s three deficiencies would reduce the total US medical expenditures by more than 60% and completely defeat the covid virus.

    The general population is zinc deficient. What has happened, to cause the general populations’ two mineral deficiencies… … is due to our farming methods… …We take minerals out of the soil and do not replace them. Overtime the soil has lost 50% of the magnesium and a similar amount of zinc. That explains why most of us are zinc and magnesium deficient. Vegetarians are the most zinc deficient and meat eaters are the most magnesium deficient. This explains why Vegetarians have significantly higher chance of dying from covid than meat eaters.

    https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/03/150323142839.htm

    Here is a Jewish doctor who treated 700 of his patients, early with zinc and hydroxychloroquine and he had no fatalities.

    https://techstartups.com/2020/04/03/updates-from-dr-vladimir-zelenko-now-treated-700-coronavirus-patients-with-99-9-success-rate-using-hydroxychloroquine-zinc-sulfate-and-z-pak-1-outpatient-died-after-not-following-protocol-exclusi/

    This is a summary of the diseases that are cured if we correct the population’s vitamin d deficiency. Correction ‘Vitamin’ D requires roughly 4000 UI/day. Same results for prostate cancer which is not shown on the chart.

    https://www.grassrootshealth.net/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/disease-incidence-prev-chart-051317.pdf

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    • #
      Bill In Oz

      William I agree with the general thrust of your comment
      1: Big Pharma has used it’s influence in the media, in among researchers and among doctors, to maximise it’s own patented drug sales and thus profitability.

      2 : Many diseases are brought on by deficiencies of key minerals ( such as magnesium, potassium & zinc in our food.

      3 Many other diseases are accelerated by staying indoors out of the sun, wearing ‘cover the whole body’ clothes, and sun block which prevent the body making it’s own vitamin D from that ‘deadly’ substance natural present in our bodies, CHOLESTEROL.

      4 Other mortal conditions are brought on by accepting the patented STATINS made by big Pharma and prescribed by doctors to patients to reduce that ‘deadly Cholesterol.

      5 : The ‘research’ we see happening on COVID 19 disease mostly reflects that same pattern. A mad scramble to find some new patented drug which will yield billions for big pharma while sidelining
      the readily available off patent drugs or unpatentable supplements like D3.

      Jo this is not an example of science being politicised..

      Put bluntly it is science being corrupted.

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      • #

        Vested interests are there, and have always been there, but if public-servant-researchers were not politicized, and trying to make universities “economic” entities, they might be a foil and a competing view. The worst case is the unholy alliance of public and private science where everyone serves themselves.

        If science communicators were not politicized and poorly trained they too could be the foil that exposes corruption on either public or private research.

        So that’s why I’m here. Thanks to the people who help make that possible.

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        • #
          Stevo

          I presume everyone knows about this??

          https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT04377646. – A Study of Hydroxychloroquine and Zinc in the Prevention of COVID-19 Infection in Military Healthcare Workers (COVID-Milit)

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          • #
            Orson

            Better still, a high quality study awaiting peer review results….June reporting?

            May 15, 2020

            Two Covid-19 hydroxychloroquine randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled clinical trials, conducted by the University of Minnesota, McGill University, University of Manitoba, and University of Alberta, completed enrollment on May 6. These trials tested post-exposure prophylaxis and preemptive early treatment with hydroxychloroquine for Covid-19. Analysis, results, and manuscripts are in process, and following scientific peer review, we will release our results.

            https://covidpep.umn.edu/updates

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    • #
      hillbilly33

      Hi William. Sadly, your ‘updates-from-dr-vladimir-zalenko’ link has fallen foul of the thought police censors, who now inform researchers that “This video has been removed for violating You Tube’s Terms of Service”!

      On magnesium. After years of suffering agonising leg and other muscle group cramps I can speak from personal experience on its benefits. My doctor recommended taking it as a supplement and “it did the trick’. Now at 87 I still take my daily high dose magnesium tablet and remain cramp-free.

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  • #
    PeterS

    There is simply not enough known about it to make a definitive assessment as to the effectiveness and detrimental effects of the drug. A search on the Internet uncovers some very dangerous side effects and even deaths as the results of taking such a drug. Whether they are true or not is debatable but I for one would not take the drug as a precautionary measure.

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    • #
      bobl

      Any drug has risks

      Here is Fluad – The Flu Vaccine generally given in Australia, would you take this?

      For Healthcare Professionals
      Applies to influenza virus vaccine, inactivated: intradermal suspension, intramuscular solution, intramuscular suspension, nasal spray

      General
      The most common adverse events were local reactions, myalgia, and headache.[Ref]

      Local
      Very common (10% or more): Tenderness (89%), erythema/redness (76.4%), pain (73.8%), induration (58.4%), swelling (56.8%), injection-site pruritus (46.9%), itching (28%), bruising (18%), injection-site ecchymosis (14.9%), mass (11%)

      Common (1% to 10%): Reaction, hemorrhage

      Postmarketing reports: Cellulitis, injection site inflammation, injection site sterile abscess[Ref]

      Other
      Very common (10% or more): Crying abnormal (41.2%), malaise (38%), fever (16%)

      Common (1% to 10%): Chest tightness

      Rare (less than 0.1%): Death

      Postmarketing reports: Hot flashes/flushes[Ref]

      Musculoskeletal
      Very common (10% or more): Myalgia (40%)

      Common (1% to 10%): Chills/shivering, back pain

      Postmarketing reports: Muscle weakness, arthritis, arthralgia, myasthenia[Ref]

      Nervous system
      Very common (10% or more): Headache (40%), drowsiness (37.7%), lethargy (14%)

      Common (1% to 10%): Migraine

      Postmarketing reports: Neuralgia, paresthesia, convulsions (including febrile seizures), encephalopathy, neuritis or neuropathy, transverse myelitis, Guillain-Barre syndrome, abnormal gait, dizziness, hypoesthesia, hypokinesia, tremor, somnolence, syncope, facial or cranial nerve paralysis, encephalopathy, limb paralysis, confusion, paralysis (including Bell’s Palsy), vertigo, exacerbation of symptoms of mitochondrial encephalomyopathy (Leigh syndrome), meningitis, eosinophilic meningitis, vaccine-associated encephalitis[Ref]

      Respiratory
      Very common (10% or more): Runny nose/nasal congestion (58%), cough (15%), upper respiratory tract infection (13%)

      Common (1% to 10%): Sore throat, cough, oropharyngeal pain, rhinorrhea, wheezing, pharyngolaryngeal pain, nasopharyngitis

      Postmarketing reports: Rhinitis, laryngitis, dyspnea, dysphonia, bronchospasm, throat tightness, pharyngitis, epistaxis[Ref]

      Gastrointestinal
      Very common (10% or more): Vomiting (15%), nausea (14.9%) diarrhea (13%)

      Postmarketing reports: Dysphagia, abdominal pain, swelling of the mouth, throat, and/or tongue[Ref]

      Metabolic
      Very common (10% or more): Loss of appetite (33.3%), decreased appetite (21%)[Ref]

      Psychiatric
      Very common (10% or more): Irritability (54%)

      Postmarketing reports: Insomnia[Ref]

      Hypersensitivity
      Postmarketing reports: Allergic reactions including anaphylactic shock, serum sickness, and death; Stevens-Johnson syndrome[Ref]

      Immunologic
      Common (1% to 10%): Infection, influenza-like illness

      Postmarketing reports: Cellulitis[Ref]

      Dermatologic
      Common (1% to 10%): Facial swelling

      Postmarketing reports: Pruritus, urticaria, rash, angioedema, sweating, flushing, pallor, rash, erythema multiforme[Ref]

      Ocular
      Common (1% to 10%): Reddened eyes

      Postmarketing reports: Eye pain, photophobia, conjunctivitis, eye irritation, eye swelling, eyelid swelling, ocular hyperemia[Ref]

      Hematologic
      Postmarketing reports: Transient thrombocytopenia, lymphadenopathy[Ref]

      Cardiovascular
      Frequency not reported: Pleuropericarditis with effusions

      Postmarketing reports: Tachycardia, pericarditis, vasculitis, vasodilation/flushing[Ref]

      Renal
      Postmarketing reports: Vasculitis with transient renal involvement[Ref]

      Genitourinary
      Common (1% to 10%): Dysmenorrhea[Re

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      • #
        Kalm Keith

        I didn’t use SSRIs to avoid being moderated. Must have been something else.

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      • #
        TdeF

        Agreed. However I am skeptical of low % reported reactions. Once under 10% they must be very hard to distinguish from other incidental causes even if true. All you have for proof is coincidence in timing.

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    • #
      Kalm Keith

      Peter,
      I can understand your concerns about possible side effects but am unhappy about the avalanche of so called information that has flooded the media and may prevent the use of a viable remedy.

      Twenty years ago while studying I was made aware of a very dodgy background to a widely applied anti anxiety medication. Apparently, specific sections of the population were “excluded” from the authorised data and approval was gained for general use based on the observed benefit over and above the placebo effect.
      Additionally, my interest in process analysis leads me to question the validity linking serotonin support to a reduction in anxiety. I have written before about the extension of the application of this medication to the very young and consequent train of effects. Enough there, sad.

      The recent promotion of the rapid fire, annual, flu vaxx also leaves me uncertain.

      I grew up in a period when vaccination was new and valid.
      I thoroughly endorsed it. Properly trialled and tested vaccines still have my total support, but the possibility that an anti CV19 vaccine is just around the corner leaves me cold.

      KK

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      • #
        PeterS

        All I am saying is I have yet to find definitive evidence to show taking Hydroxychloroquine is as safe as say taking Aspirin, which to can have bad effects on some people. There is certainly a lot of reports that say it’s fine but there are also those that show it can be deadly to a few % of takers. However, apparently Trump has been taking it for a couple of weeks and he’s still fine. Anyway, I prefer to take precautionary measures to avoid getting sick in the first place. Simple measures like washing hands, etc. are things I’ve been told to do since I was young but up to recently more and more people have become too lazy and stopped doing it let alone do it properly. I’ve seen people walk out of public toilets without washing hands at all. When we have such behaviour I sometimes wonder why we don’t have a pandemic more often.

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        • #

          PeterS, hundreds of thousands of people take CQ or HCQ and have for decades.

          The side effects are very well known.

          That doesn’t mean we know exactly what happens when it is combined with the WuFlu. And it is possible it is not as helpful as people think, or most likely — that it’s helpful in certain situations but contributes to death in others.

          But what amazes me in this is that thousands of people are suffering this disease, and thousands are taking this drug and yet we have so little good research on it. I’ve been waiting for large informative studies, instead news releases were done on tiny tin-tack 70 person research, with biased controls, statistically insignificant effects, ignoring main confounders or co-active substances.

          So much fog and yet the data, at least at an informative and indicative level must be out there.

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          • #
            PeterS

            That’s basically what I’ve said and agree.

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            • #
              Analitik

              No you did not. You stated that the risks of taking HCQ are unknown when the dosages being discussed have been taken by millions for decades as a prophylactic against malaria.

              Yes, the benefits against CoViD-19 are not yet proven in clinical study but the risks of the treatment are negligible unless you have one of the well known pre-existing conditions that lead to dangerous side effects.

              It is your right to not take HCQ due to the benefit being unproven but spreading fear is as inappropriate as this Lancet study (& the preceding one of Veterans Affairs patients where the stage of the disease and dosages used were totally inappropriate)

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              • #
                PeterS

                If you knwo all the risks then you are telling fibs.

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              • #
                Analitik

                Hydoxychloroquine has been used for long enough by enough people for the risks to be well understood. Sure, there maybe someone with a condition that has never been diagnosed before which would make them have an unexpected adverse reaction but as far as the most rigorous clinical results would indicate, when used as prescribed, Hydoxychloroquine is SAFE.

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              • #
                PeterS

                Even Arsenic if used correctly is useful. You miss my point. I’m not against others choosing to use Hydroxychloroquine. I just would not use it myself as I don’t want to take the risks. If I had the virus and was likely to die from it then I would use it as I would have nothing to lose.

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            • #
              Analitik

              And I said that you were free not to take HCQ as the choice is your right but you keep casting doubts as to the safety of HCQ as if it were some new drug being trialled rather than an old drug that is being trialled for a new purpose

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          • #
            Stevo

            42,000 doses per day in the US military – right now, every day.

            Also prescribed and used in the millions per day globally for malaria, lupus and rheumatoid arthritis.

            I think there is not much to find about it now because all the research and testing was done-and-dusted buy the 1960’s. No-one has had any need to publish anything new in the internet age.
            Regarding possible side-effects, yes correct there are always some – so that’s why you ask a doctor, which is the only way to get it in Aus and US.

            Seems eminently sensible and safe if a doctor knows you and your medical history, asks the right questions to check, and make a determination if safe for you or not.

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          • #
            A C Osborn

            Did you see my post about the Italian data on Lupus and Athritis sufferers in reponse to AnnieM?

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          • #
            A C Osborn

            Jo, have you seen this study?
            It uses 2 old drugs and the Doctor claims it cured 60 patients in 4 days.

            https://www.wionews.com/south-asia/bangladesh-doctors-claim-to-have-found-effective-drug-combination-to-cure-covid-19-patients-299247

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        • #
          Kalm Keith

          Peter,
          To illustrate the age of this treatment Hydroxychloroquine I might offer this.

          Fifty years ago I spent a month in PNG and took some form of anti malarial treatment. Possibly for a bit before and after as well.

          I felt comfortable doing that because of the long prior use of that treatment.

          Apparently, through all the deliberate information overload, it is hard to pick out the current situation, but TdeF and others point to the fact that it has been in use for a very long time and seems not to be the bogeyman portrayed by alarmists.

          My own experience was with something I thought was “Quinine” but don’t know how it relates to CQ and HCQ .

          If it’s the same thing, it’s been around for a while.

          My big worry would be getting a CV19 Vaccine in a months time. Such a short lead time would be a worry and indicate no testing or controls.
          My views on the rapid fire annual flu shot have been expressed previously.

          KK

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      Don B

      Here is a study which will use zinc with hydroxycloroquine.

      “A computer-based software will randomise participants 1:1:1 to either receive; hydroxychloroquine, azithromycin and zinc and standard medical care; favipiravir and standard medical care or standard medical care alone.”

      https://www.clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT04373733

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        Bill In Oz

        What about looking wider ?
        We have known about Zinc & hydroxycloroquine. impact on Covid 19 for a couple of months.
        many members of the general public also now know.
        So I suspect that sales of zinc supplements ave risen greatly ans that prescriptions for hydroxycloroquine. have also.
        Sales of such things can be studied.
        And correlated with infection rates across the planet.
        I think that a correlation will emerge
        Would such research be funded anywhere ?

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      • #
        Bill In Oz

        [Duplicate]AD

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  • #
    Kalm Keith

    Congratulations Jo.

    Short, very Incisive from the relevant angles and “punchy”.

    That’s the good news.

    The bad news is that the monster that needs reports like these from “The Lancet” is not hindered in any way in its progress through the world.

    Billions are at stake and we just need to stop and ask;
    what might a person of influence be induced to “slightly misrepresent” if they were assured of a grant of say five years at $200,000 a year?

    The post clearly identifies faults in the structure of “The Study” and consequently in the “statistics” used to support the Lancet conclusions. If that wasn’t enough, the extraordinary comments by doctors cover the whole issue from clinical to political and through to public interest.

    When “elected” governments cannot or will not supervise the field of Medicine we need to ask Why!

    Why do they look the other way.

    KK

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      ivan

      KK as in all cases like this, when we consider the results the first thing to do is ‘follow the money’. In this case who loses out if a cheap, patent free inhibitor gets good marks?

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      bobl

      I think Jo’s point is that Governments CAN’T be relied upon to police medicine and that a way needs to be found to remove the influence of A Big Pharma and b Partisan Politics in medical trials.

      Partly this is just the design of the studies… and this is a disease that is increasing affecting all research – The failure to go where the data takes them. Research funding these days and for a long time has required you to say what your outcome will be in order to receive funding (often called applied research). This is an attempt to make the funding relevant and avoid waste. This results in applications for funding for research that was already done (and therefore the result was known) or lying about or guessing outcomes – this was prevalent when I was an Academic in the 80s. Recently the shift seems to have been toward lying about outcomes to get funding – this results in the research having a duty to the funder to find the very outcome the application was based on. This sort of research is good for companies that want to create products based on research outcomes, except that you can be fooled by being told what you want to hear – A good example is trying to use Solar or wind power for baseload applications

      There is almost NO funding for what might be called pure research where the funding is given just to investigate something without any specific desirable endpoint and the research IS allowed to go anywhere.

      It is the funding PROCESS which has damaged science – politicisation is another, simply having Trump say he is on HCQ is probably enough for researcher funded by socialist millionaires to try to denounce him. This is despicable given the millions that a fair test of HCQ + Zinc might save.

      The over emphasis on Applied Research and the defunding of Pure research is the reason why there have been no fundamental real breakthrough technologies for 40 years. We need to get back to governments funding Pure Research over applied research.

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      • #
        Kalm Keith

        Important distinction.

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        • #

          We need to get back to governments funding Pure Research over applied research.

          Indeed. But that is also the problem. By Monopsony, the government owns science. When all research on a topic (like climate change) is paid for through the taxpayer-statutary-body then that committee become the Gods of Science.

          We also need to get independent research — funded directly by people, not through public private charity conglomerates.

          What happened to philanthropy? The government-industry partnership swallowed it too.

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          • #
            bobl

            However Jo, you will find that most ARC funding requires the researcher to state an outcome in order to get funding and the words Climate Change are two words that increase your chances in the grant process enormously, it was that way even in the 80’s and 90’s when I was an academic.

            This is a bias problem, Pure research is funded on the merit of the research, not on the exploitation prospects of the outcome. An example might be studying red-shift or working around say the zero point flux.

            Studying these things might or might not confirm previous work but in general the outcomes are irrelevant. Understanding the environment at absolute zero (EG Zero point flux) and say why radio waves can propagate across a region at zero K might lead to a tech outcome “One Day” but knowledge is the objective, not an exploitable outcome.

            The problem is we always expect a “Successful Outcome” we should not, knowledge is its own reward. If we could just shift the view of ARC (legislatively) to fund research for knowledge then you can get rid of the bias as negative (failed) outcomes are just as useful in science as success. For example then you could fund a study into the possibility that climate change is caused by say UV light changes even if the committee expects it to be proven that UV light changes do not cause climate change because disproving a hypothesisis deemed as useful as proving it. Do this and extend appeal rights against committee bias and research can be fixed.

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  • #
    Zigmaster

    The suspicion that this Lancet article is agenda driven is enhanced by the commentaries by Fauci and the media a few weeks ago praising as a success the very ordinary results coming out of the Gilead Remsidvir trial which was released to the market prematurely, which had the primary end point changed from looking at comparative deaths to average time for recovery of survivors and came out at the same time other utterances started appearing about the dangers of hydroxychloroquin. Add the fact that most of the members of Fauci’s advisory board had financial or historical connections to Gilead, this Lancet article comes as no surprise. This was well covered in an article in the Spectator last week.
    The only thing I’m not sure about is whether the agenda is the paranoia of the left trying to bring down Trump or is it purely BigPharma trying to make more money. When one realises that Big Pharma under Trump ( especially the generic companies) has been reined in I suspect the answer is a bit of both, but driven primarily by Trump Derangement Syndrome.

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    • #

      The only thing I’m not sure about is whether the agenda is the paranoia of the left trying to bring down Trump or is it purely BigPharma trying to make more money.

      Definitely both. Though TDS floats on a river of money.

      Neither the bureaucrats nor industry can own Trump, so he is the target.

      His existence threatens status, salaries and stock holdings.

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      • #
        Peter C

        The only thing I’m not sure about is whether the agenda is the paranoia of the left trying to bring down Trump or is it purely BigPharma trying to make more money.
        Definitely both.

        Big Pharma exists to make money. That is a given, they can’t exist otherwise. But I don’t think the big pharmaceutical companies are to blame for the Covid19 response. I think they have being doing their best to help, including donating Hydroxychloroquine.

        We (the West) are over reliant on China for essential supplies, including pharmaceuticals but that is going to change quickly.

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      • #
        Orson

        Hey. But only 95% of US billionaires backed Saint Hillary in 2016. With a rich ruling class like that, what could go wrong? (/sarc)

        40

  • #
    Steve of Cornubia

    The Left is largely defined, not by their objectives or beliefs, but by their hate. They actually need hate figures in order to function as a good Leftist. Of course, this conflicts with their claim to be the ‘tolerant’ side of politics, but perhaps that tendency to hate overrules any actual wish to be tolerant – it is the dominant or default condition.

    Add this to their old mantra, “The end justifies the means.” and we get politically-corrupted scientists prepared to deny people a potentially life-saving treatment simply because they desperately want to deny Donald Trump a minor victory or be forced to say, “He was right.”

    But don’t be surprised though. After all, Leftists have shown that they are even prepared to drive millions of ordinary, law-abiding citizens into poverty if that’s what it takes to turn western democracy into their preferred new socialist world order.

    Let’s not forget too that the Left tends to see ‘old’ people as conservatives, and in the way of their socialist dream …

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    • #
      Another Ian

      Around that area

      “The Left’s Undying Faith in Models”

      http://www.smalldeadanimals.com/index.php/2020/05/23/the-lefts-undying-faith-in-models/

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      • #
        Steve of Cornubia

        Rather similar to the unwarranted faith many people have in code/software. When I managed scientific instrument businesses, one of my biggest headaches was keeping control of software engineers, who almost always possessed the unfortunate combination of utter confidence in their own code, and a tendency to see everything else as simple and predictable.

        On that topic, I was once told the story (unverified) of the early Sea Wolf missile system, and a catastrophic failure during the Falklands war. The missile targeting system had been tested thoroughly against all manner of targets, some head on, others from right to left, left to right, zigzagging, swerving, etc. All went well.

        Until it was used in actual battle. A pair of Argentinian Skyhawk fighters attacked the HMS Broadsword, flying side-by-side and close together. This attack formation had not been simulated in testing and the missile targeting system couldn’t decide where the target was and so ‘locked up’. The attackers managed to hit Broadsword and disable its helicopter before going on to sink HMS Coventry using the same tactic. And so the then most-advanced sea-to-air missile failed because the design and development team didn’t think to consider that the enemy might use a close-proximity pair in attack.

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        • #
          bobn

          You are right that early computer missile systems could be fooled into switching back and forth between targets as the attack aircraft shuffled positions so the ‘highest threat’ in the computer kept changing. It was a tactic deliberately used by attack aircraft. They eliminated that weakness by the 1990s.
          In the case of the attack that sunk Coventry it was just a standard Royal Navy cock-up. Broadsword was tracking the attacking skyhawks but sea wolf is a short-range system (under 10miles) so had to wait to shoot. Shortly before firing the Coventry sailed in between Broadsword and the Skyhawks and that broke the seawolfs line of sight and thus radar lock. So the skyhawks bombed coventry. Total lack of co-ordination between the 2 ships – typical RN. I saw the video through the sea wolf tracker as it had its lock broken by coventry sailing onto the screen (I was an RAF pilot). The video is probably still classified secret to spare the RN’s blushes. Alas the vast majority of UK losses in the Falklands war were cockups. The majority of UK Tornado losses in the Gulf war were cock-ups and accidents. And since then over Iraq and afganistan the same.

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    • #
      Len

      The Cultural Marxists use the term “Liberating Tolerance”. This means attacking everything from the Right and supporting eveything from the Left.

      30

  • #
    joseph

    The Covidcatastrophe rolls on . . . .

    “Facebook has also been cracking down on coronavirus related content, as Sharyl highlights in an April Facebook post. Upon sharing a documentary from The Epoch Times, Facebook ‘fact-checkers’ claimed that Attkisson posted false content about the origin of the coronavirus, but the article used to ‘debunk’ her was written before the documentary had even aired.

    https://www.wakingtimes.com/2020/05/21/former-cbs-journalist-sharyl-attkisson-calls-out-youtube-for-censoring-factual-info-about-hydroxychloroquine/

    Here’s the video . . . about 10 minutes . . . .

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zB-_SV-y11Y&feature=emb_logo

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  • #
    David Maddison

    It looks like coronavirus “science” has become as politicised and as useless as climate “science” and for the same reasons – destruction of Western Civilisation.

    The whole point of using hydroxychloroquine is as a zinc ionophore to transport zinc across the cell membrane whereby the zinc exhibits antiviral and other beneficial activity.

    It is important because many elderly, the most affected group, and other susceptible groups have a zinc deficiency (even with a correct diet, they seem to excrete too much zinc) hence the need for supplementation in the first place. If it wasn’t for a pre-existing zinc deficiency supplementation may not be required.

    It’s remarkable but not surprising that zinc supplementation was ignored in this study whose purpose seems to be to demonstrate “orange man bad”. President Trump himself takes hydroxychloroquine with zinc supplementation as advised by his experts. That is the proper way to use it.

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  • #
    Bulldust

    I’ll score myself a point on this one. After watching Medcram on the zinc and HCQ mechanism my thoughts were, yeah but this will not benefit Big Pharma. Then I saw all the BF crowd touting this new drug and that, and new the fix would be in. Always follow the money. Always. The bigger the money the bigger the corruption.

    What’s the betting the Moderna drug is almost useless against CCP virus?

    Typo BTW. It should read ionophore in point 1.

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  • #

    Have a look at Turkey:

    Turkey says hydroxychloroquine dramatically reduces pneumonia cases

    Turkey has made significant progress in treating coronavirus patients in the early stages of the disease with the controversial malaria drug hydroxychloroquine, Turkish officials have said.

    “Turkey had stockpiled one million units of them before the first case appeared in the country,” Turkish Health Minister Fahrettin Koca said on Tuesday evening in a live broadcast, without specifying the name of the drug.

    Further:

    Turkey’s contact tracers race to contain coronavirus

    After recording some of the fastest growth in COVID-19 infections in the world, health officials say the outbreak in Turkey has hit a plateau around six weeks after the first case was confirmed. The death toll of 3,336 is lower than 12 other countries.

    The highest number of death /day has been 127 on 4/19

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  • #

    COVID19 deaths rate (by population) as at 23 May 2020 for selected countries. Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to link the mortality with the severity of Government imposed lockdown suppression strategies. Your time starts, now.

    Country Deaths_per_1M_population

    Norway 43
    Denmark 97
    Germany 100
    Brazil 103
    Portugal 128
    Canada 168
    Switzerland 220
    USA 298
    Ireland 325
    Netherlands 339
    Sweden 396
    France 434
    UK 541
    Italy 541
    Spain 613

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    • #
      Serp

      Did Belgium drop off the bottom of your paste area? Something around 800 innit?

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      • #

        Death rates are confounded by so many things and are a very lagging indicator.

        To judge lockdowns look at new daily cases (then look at testing rates and demographics and a 12 day lag).

        Pooled analysis of lockdown and “deaths” has been used to fool a lot of people, just as the pooled Lancet study above does.

        Study each country in detail and the pattern is obvious.

        All lockdowns reduce the rate of growth starting around 12 days later (5 day incubation + 7 days til “hospital-time”). Some lockdowns are also inefficient, overdone, and sabotaged. (And some are all three at once).

        It’s possible for lockdowns to be successful, and stymied, invasive, inefficient and also necessary.

        It’s a wicked dilemma and both extremes are cherry-picking out the bit of reality that suits them from this diabolical mix.

        It was not possible in March to know which aspects of lockdowns would be the most effective, though it was possible to know all flights should have been subject to mandatory quarantine (and it should have been done in Feb). The big question that matters is why they weren’t. Why people are locked in homes in the US and UK and yet foreigners from viral hot spots can still fly in, and be asked nicely not to infect anyone.

        This is the Swamp calling…

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        • #
          Bill In Oz

          Jo, Your posts have penetrated through the fog of stupidity that has been generated by this disease.
          You have been willing to call the shots on the science
          And stand your ground against dopey science. dopey politics and even dopey personal abuse.

          Thank you Jo !

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        • #
          Roger Knights

          “Pooled analysis of lockdown and “deaths” has been used to fool a lot of people”

          I assume you mean the CDC’s practice, exposed recently by the Atlantic.

          10

  • #
    Ruairi

    Left-wingers would dump in a bin,
    All supplies of Hydroxychloroquine,
    If they thought an infection,
    Could lose an election,
    For Trump, which he’s likely to win.

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    • #
      Andrew McRae

      ^—^
      Mere mortals would go down in flames
      finding rhymes for chemical names.
      But not sharp Ruairi,
      who so clearly very
      much values a challenge for brains.

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  • #
    Peter Fitzroy

    Two seconds with a search engine produces a great many results for randomised trial and Hydroxychloroquine – all support Lancet’s findings

    Here is an example
    https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/news-perspective/2020/05/studies-find-further-lack-covid-benefit-hydroxychloroquine

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    • #
      Peter C

      I would like to replicate your result Peter.

      Which search engine did you use and what were your search terms?

      So far I have been far less successful in finding new reports of clinical trials, randomised of otherwise.

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      • #
        Peter Fitzroy

        Google, Covid, randomised, Hydroxychloroquine As the terms

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        • #
          Peter C

          I ok, I did that. Not much new in the last month.

          Number three article returned was a Chinese hospital study which said;

          Key findings: For the 62 COVID-19 patients, 46.8% (29 of 62) were male and 53.2% (33 of 62) were female, the mean age was 44.7 (15.3) years. No difference in the age and sex distribution between the control group and the HCQ group. But for TTCR, the body temperature recovery time and the cough remission time were significantly shortened in the HCQ treatment group. Besides, a larger proportion of patients with improved pneumonia in the HCQ treatment group (80.6%, 25 of 31) compared with the control group (54.8%, 17 of 31). Notably, all 4 patients progressed to severe illness that occurred in the control group.

          https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.03.22.20040758v3

          So that seems quite at odds with the Lancet report!
          TTCR = Time to clinical recovery.

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          • #
            Peter C

            I think it is silly for people to give 6 red thumbs (so far) to Peter Fitzroy for his simple and polite response to my question.

            Red thumbs to his original post;

            Two seconds with a search engine produces a great many results for randomised trial and Hydroxychloroquine – all support Lancet’s findings

            may be justified since it is obviously incorrect and can be seen as distracting and likely trying to create confusion.

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    • #
      David Maddison

      How many of these trials used zinc supplementation as required?

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      • #
        Peter Fitzroy

        If you bother to do you own research you would see that zinc, on its own, has great promise in reducing the severity of Covid, neither are a cure though.
        I was talking about the randomisation aspect, and what was its impact.

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        • #
          AndyG55

          “How many of these trials used zinc supplementation as required?”

          Answer the question instead of sidestepping…..

          You have put your foot on your keyboard again, then started stamping when everyone noticed.

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          • #

            Peter, “randomized” is abused and misused. Just because a search engine finds the word does not mean the study was randomized.

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            • #
              Peter Fitzroy

              I did post a link, which was randomised.
              However, is randomisation all you think it is? It is true that a placebo can help to determine the efficacy of a drug, but in the Lancet case is not really necessary. What they found is more in line with various treatment options, taking Hydroxychloroquine and zinc and vitamin k and ascorbic acid, and god knows what else, may work to lessen the symptoms and speed recovery, but that is not what the Lancet report was on about.

              09

              • #
                AndyG55

                No it was selective. Done on people already with mild to moderate symptoms

                Didn’t you even bother reading what the study was about ?

                Nothing to do with actual possible preventative medicines.

                Why do you continue to try to downplay the FACT that zinc was not combined with the HQN even though that is what has been indicated in Jo’s post ?

                What sort of silly game are you trying to play?

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              • #
                Peter Fitzroy

                Look, you add whatever you want, but that is not the study quoted at the top, For example the study did not mention alcohol, soap, sun, rain wind… For the final time zinc was not part of the study, to whine about its lack makes your comments nonsensical

                010

              • #
                AndyG55

                It didn’t mention the one thing that is needed to make HCQ properly effective, it wasn’t tested.

                It was a non-random non-result, and nothing of your frivolous, fatuous and vacuous comments attempts to distract from that fact can change it.

                All you have managed is to show your total lack of comprehension of the issue.

                So, just a normal comment from you.

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    • #
      AndyG55

      Again, no mention of zinc in these studies.

      Which is what Jo mentions in the Topic headline.

      But you knew that didn’t you. 😉

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    • #
      Bill In Oz

      Are you still asleep Peter Fitzroy ?
      Those studies use
      NO ZINC !

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      • #
        TdeF

        Which is the entire point of the article. As AndyG55 notes.
        I don’t mind a contrarian point of view and it is necessary, but when the essential fact is overlooked, that is just wasting everyone’s time.

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        • #
          Peter Fitzroy

          I would argue that a study which used 2 variables – zinc and Hydroxychloroquine would be even worse than the lancet one.
          How can I argue about a variable, zinc, which was not in the study. Neither was ascorbic acid, which is also high on the list of palatines, none of you have mentioned that.

          023

          • #
            AndyG55

            What you would argue is immaterial to science.

            There are known ways in which zinc and HQN are inter-dependent for effectiveness.

            Why do you continually ignore actual science. ?

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          • #
            TdeF

            They are not independent variables. Like a car which needs both steering and brakes. Arguing that having no brakes is dangerous is missing the point.

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          • #
            A C Osborn

            Would you like to see a study for just how good Zinc is.
            ie a 50% reduction in Oxygen use, Ventilations and Death?
            This study uses HCQ + Azithromycin with or without Zinc Sulphate, see table 4 for reults.

            https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.05.02.20080036v1.full.pdf

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          • #
            A C Osborn

            I have an Access database of proposed Treatments for COVID-19, it currently stands at 234 different ones.
            Obviously some have been tested, the latest one for Remdesivir is completely biased as the Placebo control group had 20 more patients who were already being Mechanically Ventilated.
            We all know the outcome for that treatment.

            60

      • #
        Peter Fitzroy

        Then do your own research – I was commenting on the randomisation or lack of it, but you knew that

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    • #
      AndyG55

      The study you cite is no more “randomised” than the one Jo is pointing to.

      So your comment was totally pointless.

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      • #
        Peter Fitzroy

        Asinine comment of the day award to you

        From the link to the first study
        https://www.bmj.com/content/369/bmj.m1849Design Multicentre, open label, randomised controlled trial”
        and the second
        https://www.bmj.com/content/369/bmj.m1844Design Comparative observational study using data collected from routine care.” Not a randomised trial, but a comparative one, which is just as valid.

        010

        • #
          Analitik

          So the study shows HCQ alone has no statistical benefit and some small side effects. No zinc was ingested in the course of this trial.

          So basically not relevant except to confirm that HCQ is not dangerous.

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          • #
            AndyG55

            Seems the poor lad as severe comprehension issues.

            We have noticed that on many occasions.

            Is it a deliberate ruse, or is it real?

            70

        • #
          AndyG55

          WRONG as always.

          It was very selective.. It chose people in all groups that already had CV-19.

          That is what the very title of the study says.. cannot you read ?

          It tells us absolutely nothing about the preventative possibilities of a zinc-HQN combination.

          Your comments are ignorance based, as well as deliberately provocative..

          … not to mention sophomoronic.

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        • #
          AndyG55

          Vacuous and frivolous comment of the day is always yours.

          Not random tests, not including the use of zinc.

          Irrelevant distraction attempt.

          But you knew that.

          20

  • #

    This is clearly developing into a propaganda exercise on behalf of Big Pharma. How does Hydroxychloroquine which is a standard for malaria treatment transform into a Covid-19 menace?

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    • #
      Peter C

      Big Pharma is a bogeyman of the academic community! Free enterprise and profit are very bad.

      I have not seen any articles by or attributed to Big Pharmaceutical companies which refer to Hydroxychloroquine as a menace. Several companies donated supplies of Hydroxychloroquine.

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      • #
        TdeF

        Like everyone else, 90% of people are honest and trustworthy. It is the last 10% who worry me and some of these run companies. No Hippocratic oath there. Nor at the head of WHO any more. It is part of the expansion of the UN to run every aspect of our lives, like ‘Human Rights’ as decided by unelected extremists.

        Once UN organizations are run by activist politicians let alone socialist revolutionaries like Tedros Adhonom or Christiana Figueres, real science ceases to exist. And socialists know how to rig elections. Hitler became head of Germany with only 28% of the vote and Lenin with even less. And that was the end of freedom for anyone, even the people who supported them.

        In the US at present, the extreme left desperately want postal votes and say Trump is ‘interfering’ with the 2020 elections by opposing their new demand for changes to Postal elections at every level. However in every investigation after the 2016 elections, especially the one crowd funded in Michigan, it was the Democrats who were found stuffing voting boxes. Those investigations were then quietly dropped although some electoral officials have been charged only this week. And they were paid by the Democrats.

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  • #
    Scott

    President Trump first mentioned HCQ in March and it has been ignored or attacked ever since. Many reasons for this but the main being a need for the US Democrats/Fake News/Deep State to keep the scare going for as long as possible.

    How do you stop a President that was on track to a landslide re-election?

    Stop his rallies, destroy the economy, lock everyone away and demand a postal election that you can then try and cheat away.

    They are fighting for their very existence and will do anything, hurt anyone, destroy everything to win.

    If you want answers to what is happening and why, look no further than the insanity of the US political scene.

    You may not like President Trump but do not mistake him for a fool.

    One day the world will look back and thank god for this President.

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    • #
      PeterS

      One day the world will look back and thank god for this President.

      More importantly one day the world will look back and wish he was still the President.

      221

    • #
      Bill In Oz

      This is NOT about USA politics although some folk wish it to be so.
      It is about a NOVEL infectious disease escaping from a Chinese virology lab in Wuhan.
      It has killed 350,000 people.
      Including 95,000 in the USA.
      This discussion is about possible cures for that disease.

      It is huge ideologically driven mistake to think it is all about Trump.

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      • #
        TdeF

        Is there any news in the US which is not about Trump? TDS is universal in Hollywood. If there is a murd*r in Alabama, it is Trump’s rhetoric which caused it. And now he has played a round of golf. That will be front page news with attendant rage from the left. Cher, Streisand, Midler, Carrey, De Niro, Fonda, Baldwin and the entire late night crew.

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        • #
          Bill In Oz

          Yes, very true TdeF ! And that is obvious in the views of many commentators here on Jo’s blog. Some seem to think that this infectious disease is all a scam to undermine Trump’s re-election.

          25

          • #
            Scott

            Bill,

            The virus is real and so is the use of this virus to undermine not only President Trump, but democracy itself.

            You yelling that this is not about US Politics does not change what is happening in front of anyone that cares to see.

            When you pull back the curtain of the lying media you can see they are pulling the levers of public opinion and have almost fooled the world.

            It is not too late to wake up, even for you.

            40

      • #
        Analitik

        It is very connected with US politics in that Trump’s endorsement has made it instantly targeted by the MSM . Otherwise, they may well have questioned the push by big Pharma for new drugs and vaccines against this old therapy.

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        • #
          Roger Knights

          I suspect that the opposition of former FDA bigshot Dr. Bright has a lot to do with the media campaign against HCQ. He has been a “source” for WaPo for years and papers want to keep in good standing with their sources.

          I suspect that the oppostion of Bright, and of the Lancet editor, is rooted in an aversion to anything that has a populist or “outsider” taint.

          30

      • #
        David A

        Bill, I think it fair to say President Trump is all about the global battle for national autonomy verses one world government.

        And it is fair to say that whatever the cause of this pandemic, it is being used by the one-world crowd to attack the champion of national independence, one Donald Trump.
        ( If you have not seen President Trump’s welcome to 100k plus in India I suggest looking it up.). He is vital to the world in my perspective.

        10

    • #
      Len

      Capital G for God.

      51

  • #
    R.B.

    I think the issue is that 9% of the control group died and 0.3% were “independently associated with an increased risk of de-novo ventricular arrhythmia during hospitalisation”

    Sounds like only those given the treatments were checked or reported on. Remember that someone dying when serious ill or on a ventilator is not going to have their charts investigated for a cause of death.

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    • #

      Or doctors who first assessed these people picked up that they were more vulnerable, and decided to treat them aggressively with anti-virals whereas people who were less likely to die were also less likely to get aggressive treatment.

      That one selection bias alone would raise the death rate in the anti-viral column.

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  • #
    Mal

    Everyone needs a healthy immune system to fight of disease.
    The sun is a natural supplier of vitamin D that is essential to the manufacture of t cells by the thymus gland
    During winter and in particular during winter many if not most people have very low vitamin D levels
    Why isn’t the medical profession pushing such a simple action which can assist in not only helping with this epidemic but also colds and flu
    You can obtain vitamin D over the counter at pharmacies in Australia
    As an addition for those who dabble in alternate medicine,Deep breathing and then exhaling whilst intoning the vowel sound Ehm whilst focusing your consciousness on the thymus gland ,behind your sternum, may also stimulate the production of t cells

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      Bill In Oz

      @Mal, “You can obtain vitamin D over the counter at pharmacies in Australia”
      The body of a young person while in the sun can manufacture about 20,000 IU’s of Vitamin D in an hour.
      But this natural capacity declines with age. ( Programmed Ageing at work ).
      So older people require very high doses of vitamin D3 as a supplement.

      In Australia the over the counter D3 only have a maximum of 1000 IU. So effectively they are useless.
      One can get higher doses D3 via a doctor’s prescription if the GP is cooperative. But that is also very expensive.
      Simpler & cheaper to buy online the D3 that one needs.

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      • #
        John F. Hultquist

        Because of my wife’s medical history she takes quite a lot of D3. The pills are translucent gold color, and provide 2000 IU – listed as 500% daily value. She takes more than one.
        A daily Multi-pill has 400 IU (50% daily value), and 11 mg of Zink (100% d.v.).
        I’ve been taking one of each, so 2,400 IU.

        Of interest is that because of her medical history she can be tested for Vit D with insurance paying. On the other hand, I would have to pay. So says our local clinic.
        I get almost no sun exposure, so our clinic thinks that the 2,400 IU provided via the 2 pills is an okay thing to do. Sites claim that meat, nuts, and dark chocolate contain Zink (others also) and my diet includes these.

        I suppose the assumption (in the USA) is that most people eat too much and get all the vitamins & minerals needed. Exceptions exist.

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        • #
          Bill In Oz

          John, Unless all the assumptions are unpacked then the conclusions reached will be wrong.

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    7887

    All the patients were very sick in hospital before being given hydroxii
    It would be the same as someone close to death with cancer then given chemo and having them die and concluding chemo is useless and doesn’t work..

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      Analitik

      Or as someone said, it’s like saying an airbag is useless for preventing automotive accident injuries and increases injury when you set off the airbag next to the patient’s head when they have been brought into the ICU, following the auto accident.

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    David Maddison

    It’s not the hydroxychloroquine that kills the virus, it’s just the vector to get the zinc across the cell membrane whereupon it can act to kill the virus by a variety of mechanisms.

    Leftists are causing people to die because they deliberately omit the requirement for supplemental zinc in the mostly affected group which is the elderly.

    All because they want to show “orange man bad”.

    No Leftist should ever take hydroxychloroquine with or without zinc. That would make them hypocrites wouldn’t it?

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      TdeF

      If this is the entire benefit, it would be of no assistance to someone already with seriously damaged lungs, heart, intestine, blood. It acts to arrest the progress of the disease, not a cure. It only buys time for the body to develop antibodies and prevent massive damage. No one suggested it was a cure or that there is such a thing.

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      • #
        David Maddison

        Agreed. It’s for prophylaxis or relatively early stages of the disease. If not given as prophylaxis to high risk groups it should be given as soon as signs of the infection become apparent. And it’s a treatment, not a cure.

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        • #

          HCQ is also anti-inflammatory. There is more to it.

          But anti-inflammatory is it’s own double edged sword. On the one hand we need the immune system to fight back, and on the other, it is what kills people if the immune response is too large.

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            Konrad

            “HCQ is also anti-inflammatory. There is more to it.”

            Yes, it seems to act in three ways:

            1- Interferes with the virus’ ability to bond to ACE2 cell receptors. This was determined in a 2005 study of chloroquine and SARS-1. This reduces the virus’ chances of invading a cell.

            2- Acts as a zinc ionophore, allowing zinc transport across the cell membrane. The extent of this effect is unclear, however it is known that raised zinc levels within a cell can prevent such viruses using cell machinery for reproduction.

            3- Suppressing overactive immune response. This is well evidenced by the successful use of HCQ in the treatment of Lupus and Rheumatoid Arthritis. There is much evidence of WuFlu causing overactive immune response, including dramatic videos of cytokine cascade collapses involving younger victims.

            Points 1 & 2 indicate why early treatment is so important to the efficacy of HCQ. It can slow the reproduction rate of the virus and allow a person’s immune system to get the upper hand.

            Point 3 may seem to indicate HCQ could be helpful even after the viral infection is well established. However the WuFlu, just like SARS-1, seems to be causing heart damage in the later stages of infection. HCQ is known to present a greater risk to persons with cardiac problems. This is why the doctors recommending HCQ say to use it at the earliest sign of infection to prevent hospitalization, and not to use it if a patient has become ill enough to require a ventilator. (Note: nearly all the cases of claimed negative outcomes for the use of HCQ involve use of the drug for infections that have progressed well outside its window of efficacy and far into the cardiac danger zone).

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    el gordo

    Prevention better than cure.

    ‘A quarter of French adults smoke. Many people were surprised, therefore, when researchers reported late in April that only 5% of 482 covid-19 patients who came to the Pitié-Salpêtrière hospital in Paris between February 28th and April 9th were daily smokers. The ratios of smokers to non-smokers in earlier tallies at hospitals in America, China and elsewhere in France varied.

    ‘But all revealed habitual smokers to be significantly underrepresented among those requiring hospital treatment for the illness. Smokers, the authors of the report wrote, “are much less likely” to suffer severely from sars-cov-2, the virus that causes covid-19. Rarely, they added, is such a result seen in medicine.’

    The Economist

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    • #
      Serp

      Yes, there was a time when smoking was considered beneficial as can be seen in British films made during the war years.

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    • #
      Bill In Oz

      But what proportion of older people are smokers ?
      Smokers tend to die at younger ages from the many diseases associated with smoking like lung cancer, throat cancer etc.

      And this is a french study. France has it’s own unique methods of preparing cigarette tobacco.

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        el gordo

        The argument goes that smokers lungs don’t offer a pleasant home for Covid-19, too much carbon.

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      Roger Knights

      Are vapers underrepresented too? If so, it’s the nicotine, not the tar, that’s doing the prevention. That would be interesting to know.
      (Nicotine has some therapeutic uses, though I’ve forgotten what they are.)

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    Speedy

    UNREAL! Haven’t these guys heard of the scientific method? Or don’t they teach that any more?

    Cheers,

    Speedy

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    Speedy

    Looks like there’s some research getting done using zinc in conjunction with hydroxychloroquine. Pacebos in place for both zinc and hydroxychloroquine, only trouble is they haven’t started yet. And it’s going to take 2 months at least.

    https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT04377646

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      Analitik

      If they actually started this on time (May 4th), there should be some preliminary data by now but there is ZERO followup information anywhere on this trial

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    • #
      Andrew McRae

      This URL will search the same site for all interventional trials using Zinc and HQC that are either recruiting, or underway, or completed.
      https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/results?cond=COVID-19&type=Intr&recrs=a&recrs=f&recrs=d&recrs=e&intr=%22Hydroxychloroquine%22%2C+%22Zinc%22

      It currently finds a grand total of…(drum roll)… ONE trial, which won’t finish until December.

      The lack of officially registered trials testing the one medication question all doctors really need answered most urgently to minimise COVID19 impact, especially in the developing world, is just amazing.

      Or to put it another way, When Big Pharma sends their studies, they’re not sending their best, folks. They’re not bringing drugs. Sad!

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    Nezysquared

    What has fascinated me in looking at the Johns Hopkins WuFlu map is the tiny size of the red dots in central / West Africa. I suspected it was maybe the common use of Ivermectin for parasitic infection (haven’t those studies gone quiet??) but maybe Chloroquine is also a significant factor in mozzy infested zones… Yes there are those who may put the low numbers of infection down to lack of testing etc but maybe there really is something more to this….

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    Bill In Oz

    Dr John Campbell is still collating and analysing the COVID 19 data in the UK.

    His 33 minute video on Youtube from Saturday 23/5/2020
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XJMlcKbFOEI

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      TedM

      Thanks for this Bill. Interesting, particularly that the randomised testing revealed that children were as likely to be infected as adults.

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    Bruce of Newcastle

    The Lancet editor is a stinky.

    Lancet Editor’s Backing For Extinction Rebellion (28 Mar)

    It turns out however that Horton is not the impartial expert we were led to believe. Last October he wrote this comment piece for the Lancet, praising Extinction Rebellion and calling for health workers to campaign for its far left policies

    All you need to know. As soon as Trump came out for HCQ this “study” was inevitable.

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    Wayne Job

    This enhanced flu virus that escaped from a wuhan research lab. A female researcher who collected viruses for the lab. I read her reports from about last October that poor woman has disappeared.
    The virus was enhanced by attaching some parts of a HIV virus to it thus trying to make a weapon out of it. Two experts from USA visited the lab a year or so ago and told them the lab was unfit for doing that type of work and dangerous. Bloody communists.

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    Konrad

    The problem for those desperately trying to prevent the use of Hydroxychloroquine for prophylaxis and early treatment of WuFlu is that they have raised more big red flags than the Chinese army on parade.

    They have made the “Mann mistake”. When Dr. Mann produced his infamous “hockey stick graph” it was soon found that he had short centred proxy data before principal component analysis. This raised the big red flag as it was clear that the shape of the graph was an engineered outcome to support a narrative. From that point on it didn’t matter how many times other AGW promoters tried to produce similar graphs, sceptics knew to look for the trick or cheat. Redating sediment core tops? Excluding all mainland proxies? Bristlecone pines again? Using sediment cores upside down? The cheat was always quickly found. Mann’s actions meant every subsequent attempt by others was subject to intense scrutiny and certain destruction.

    The TDS afflicted trying to prevent the use of Hydroxychloroquine have made the same mistake. One of the first red flags to go up was the WHO. In their official recommendation against the use of HCQ, they overstated the dangers of a drug that had been in safe use since 1955, omitted to mention its proven efficacy against SARS-1 and even worse, claimed those recommending it were suggesting doses far higher than normally used for Malaria, Lupus and Rheumatoid Arthritis. This was wilful mendacity. All the main doctors recommending HCQ for WuFlu were suggesting doses lower than for other conditions.

    The second big red flag was the “VA study” in the US. Veterans Affairs did not conduct the study and quickly shot down the three clowns who misused their data. The “study” tried to discredit HCQ by intentionally including patients that had been treated well outside the guidelines of the doctors recommending HCQ. This spoke to motive. This wasn’t science, this was clearly politics.

    And once the red flags have gone up, just like the “hockey stick graph” you know where to look. The Lancet “study” doesn’t stand up to a second of scrutiny. 96,000 cases? Every single one was hospitalised with falling blood O2 before HCQ was tried. Mehra et al clearly had an agenda, and that agenda was clearly not science.

    The glorious news is that those seeking to prevent the use of HCQ for prophylaxis and early treatment have failed. And in failing, they have handed President Trump the 2020 election. The list of nations using HCQ as their primary WuFlu protocol continues to grow rapidly, and the results cannot be denied. Even developing nations with poor health infrastructure using HCQ are seeing dramatically lower mortality per infection rates than the EU or the Democrat US states.

    Trump was right about HCQ, it was a “game changer”. Not just in fighting the WuFlu, but in winning the 2020 election.

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    WXcycles

    COVID-19 spread during summer:

    … Experiments conducted in a study indicated “a striking correlation of the stability of winter viruses at low RH (20–50%), while the stability of summer or all-year viruses enhanced at higher RH (80%)” [source] …

    https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/transmission/

    The source paper.

    Annual Review of Virology (March 16, 2016)

    Seasonality of Respiratory Viral Infections

    Miyu Moriyama, Walter J. Hugentobler, and Akiko Iwasaki1

    “ … The results indicate a striking correlation of the stability of winter viruses at low RH (20–50%), while the stability of summer or all-year viruses enhanced at higher RH (80%) (Supplemental Table 1). … “

    “ … According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention surveillance report, all six recent influenza pandemics occurring in the Northern Hemisphere during 1957–2009 were spring to summer. … ”

    https://www.annualreviews.org/doi/pdf/10.1146/annurev-virology-012420-022445

    Table 1:

    https://i.ibb.co/ySsQFn7/COVID-19-Does-not-go-dormant-during-summer.png

    The data shows that COVID-19 spreads about 25% faster during warmer weather.

    https://i.ibb.co/pxTBjv0/Warm-v-Cool-Countries-Percent-Died-Covid-19-29th-March-to-11th-April.png

    i.e. COVID-19 is an “ALL YEAR” virus.

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    Selwyn H

    Here’s a letter I wrote to our local newspaper last week which covers many of the topics discussed in this article and the comments.

    Shock, Horror! USA President Trump has just announced that he has been taking hydroxychloroquine tablets for over two weeks to prevent Covid-19 infection. If I was in his shoes I would be taking them too with Vice President Pence’s press secretary recently testing positive to the virus.

    Once again Trump “practises what he preaches” and the anti-Trump American media goes into palpitations over his recommendation for a drug which they say doesn’t work and has dangerous side effects. Even Australian Fox News calls it an untested drug.

    Absolute rubbish! Chloroquine has been used for over 70 years mainly as an anti-malarial drug and is very cheap, easy to manufacture and has few side effects. Like many Australians I worked on construction projects throughout Papua Niugini on and off for over 25 years from 1970, always took my chloroquine tablets and never caught malaria even in mosquito infested swamp areas. I certainly had no side effects from using it.

    Several studies have shown that chloroquine is the most effective drug trialled so far for coronavirus prevention and for treatment particularly in the early stages of infection and large numbers of doctors and nurses are using it.

    Medical experts on the US government panel devising coronavirus treatments appear to be disparaging the use of chloroquine and pushing the expensive new drug “Remdesivir” developed by drug company Gilead. 11 of these experts have ties to Gilead with two on its advisory board and others as paid consultants so they wouldn’t be biased would they.

    It has been noticed that malarial countries, particularly in Africa which still use large amounts of chloroquine have a very low rate of coronavirus infection. I wonder why?

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    Philip Gibbs

    I am a 64 year old male with Rheumatoid Arthritis – RA (diagnosed in 1994). I also have COAD (chronic obstructive airways disease). I was prescribed, and used HCQ (plaquenil) from 1994 until 2013, when I started a new regime for my RA.
    During this 19 year period I NEVER suffered from any flu or respiratory problems whatsoever.
    Since 2013, I have been hospitalised three times with severe pneumonia, each bout being more severe than the last. Each time resulted in me being in ICU for 10 days or more.
    My last episode was in March this year (2020)
    When I was released from hospital after this last bout, my Rheumatologist suggested I re-commence taking HCQ again.
    I also suffer from atrial fibrilation (heart flutter), and even then, my cardiologist and rheumatologist both agreed that the risks involved with me taking HCQ were substantially less than the damage that may occur if I should contract this COVID-19. I also take an “over the counter” zinc supplement, and find that my general health now, is probably as good as it has been in the last ten years.

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      Peter C

      Thanks Philip,

      Your account adds to the number of positive stories about the efficacy of Hydroxychloroquine.

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    Mervyn

    Wise people know that just because it is in Lancet does not mean it is without serious flaws.

    I found the following article that makes interesting reading in 2020:

    https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1420798/

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    • #
      Peter C

      Thanks Mervyn,
      Your reference:
      Peer Review – Richard Smith (former editor of the British Medical Journal)

      That is an excellent article, confirming everything I thought was wrong with Peer Review. We have seen the Peer Review process used in Climate Science to suppress articles critical of Global Warming and Climate Science and promoting orthodoxy.

      Clearly the same process happens in Medicine.

      Richard Smith concludes:

      CONCLUSION
      So peer review is a flawed process, full of easily identified defects with little evidence that it works. Nevertheless, it is likely to remain central to science and journals because there is no obvious alternative, and scientists and editors have a continuing belief in peer review. How odd that science should be rooted in belief.

      I disagree slightly with his conclusion. I would say there is an alternative. That is the open publication paradigm which he mentions. Prestigious Journals like the Lancet can survive, I think, because authors will prefer them and pay more for the privilege but they will have to adapt. I think it is going that way anyway.

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    Bill In Oz

    Jo It’s time for a ‘real’ weather post.
    WA is being hammered by a major out of season storm
    Qld towns & Brisbane have heir coldest day in 99 years
    SA has weks of bitter cold wet wind weather which usually comes in late June but it’s only late May
    Ditto in Victoria and NSW
    Snow is happening the Alps.

    Where is our badly needed global warming ?
    Why is the country frreeezzzzing cold and wet ?
    St. Greta has given up on climate and is hiding out somewhere away from Covid infection in Sweden
    The BOM has no idea.
    Please tell us what’s going on ?

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    el gordo

    Cover-19 seems to discriminate in the UK, but the authorities aren’t sure why and will hold an inquiry.

    https://medium.com/@NoahCarl/why-are-non-white-britons-more-likely-to-die-of-covid-19-76335b95046e

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      Konrad

      There is no mystery. The virus targets the ACE2 cell receptor. The expression of this cell receptor varies with genetic ancestry and also biological gender. Interestingly, some ethnicity that have a high ACE2 receptor expression as adults have a far lower expression when young.

      My understanding is the NHS in the UK have quietly accepted the scientific reality and moved BAME persons deemed at higher risk away from front-line WuFlu hospital duties. To add to this they have also ordered 16,000,000 200mg doses of HCQ to trial prophylaxis for 10,000 health workers. Predictably, neither of these sensible moves are deemed worthy of mention by the establishment media.

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        Peter C

        “BAME” is a term long used in the UK to refer to black, Asian and minority ethnic people.

        My understanding is the NHS in the UK have quietly accepted the scientific reality and moved BAME persons deemed at higher risk away from front-line WuFlu hospital duties. To add to this they have also ordered 16,000,000 200mg doses of HCQ to trial prophylaxis for 10,000 health workers.

        Not waiting for a “Clinical Trial” then!

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        David A

        Also the UK is not exactly a hot sunny environment. So especially non white people are likely to be in more D deficient.

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    Yonason

    The Lancet is still trusted on controversial issues?

    WHY?!

    Their activism was front and center in the Iraq war, to the point that at the time many were critical of them, like these.

    https://web.archive.org/web/20041204174345/http://slate.msn.com/id/2108887/

    http://www.fumento.com/weblog/archives/2008/01/my_article_on_n.html

    Sadly, now, nearly all you can find are the original lancet lies and the ever multiplying echoes spread by other activists. (Note that the Slate article was only available from the internet archive from a long time ago, and that most more recent versions have been purged.)

    As to Hydroxychorooquine, some have probably already said it (sorry if I’m repeating), but it’s the Zinc that kills the virus. All the HDC does is get the Zinc to where it needs to be. Michael Behe explains, here…
    https://www.discovery.org/multimedia/audio/2020/03/michael-behe-on-covid-19-chloroquine-malaria-and-the-edge-of-evolution/

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    TedM

    For those of us who obviously can not access HQC and hoping to reduce our personal and family risk from covid-19, it might be worth while adding quercitin to your zinc and other supplemenys.

    https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/jf5014633

    Quercetin as a zinc ionophore. A search will bring up many more studies. All in-vitro of course.

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    Roger Knights

    The Coronavirus Vaccine May Not Work on the Elderly
    For those over 65, the pandemic is unlikely to end when the first vaccines arrive
    Brendan Borrell May 21 · 8 min read

    https://onezero.medium.com/the-coronavirus-vaccine-may-not-work-on-the-elderly-3fc176f75751

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      Bill In Oz

      Then we will have to keep taking out Vitamin d3, Zinc and melatonin each day.
      No huge burden, I already do these things.

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    Kevin a

    Judy Mikovits
    As research director of CFS research organization Whittemore Peterson Institute (WPI) from 2006 to 2011, Mikovits led an effort that reported in 2009 that a retrovirus known as xenotropic murine leukemia virus-related virus (XMRV) was associated with CFS and may have had a causal role.

    She has published some very interesting books.
    Plague: One Scientist’s Intrepid Search for the Truth about Human Retroviruses and Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (ME/CFS), Autism, and Other Diseases.

    Has any one seen the Judy Mikovits video?

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    Terry Sanders

    I’ve a couple of articles you might be interested in with regards to Hydroxychloroquine

    The first one is from November 2003 and talks about HCQ effects on HIV, SARS and coronavirus HCoV-229E.
    Effects of chloroquine on viral infections: an old drug against today’s diseases

    Here’s its conclusion on the safety of HXQ:

    Chloroquine/hydroxychloroquie has a well-studied toxicity profile. The half-century-long use of this drug in the therapy of malaria demonstrates the safety of acute administration of chloroquine to human beings. The use of chloroquine/hydroxychloroquine in rheumatic diseases and for antimalarial prophylaxis showed a low incidence of adverse events during chronic administration of this drug for periods of up to a few years. In these cases, the most serious toxic effect is a macular retinopathy, which depends on the cumulative dose rather than on the daily dose, and permanent damage may be prevented with regular visual monitoring during treatment.
    A recent study provided encouraging results on the safety of a high dosage of the drug (up to 500 mg of chloroquine base per day) even during pregnancy.

    The next one is from 2005 and is about HCQ’s effect on Hepatitis C.
    Preliminary report of anti-hepatitis C virus activity of chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine in huh-5-2 cell line

    Its conclusion:

    Chloroquine and hydroxylchloroquine can be useful additive agents which are long acting, cheap and least toxic, to be utilized in combination with Interferon alfa, ribavirin and amantadine and achieve radical cure of viral hepatitis C infection.

    Finally one about its use for treating Lupus and its safety for pregnant women.
    Hydroxychloroquine in systemic lupus erythematosus and rheumatoid arthritis and its safety in pregnancy
    It’s conclusion:

    In conclusion, based on the findings of this review, HCQ is not associated with any increased risk of congenital defects, spontaneous abortion, fetal death, prematurity or decreased numbers of live births in pregnant patients with autoimmune diseases. Our data demonstrate that HCQ is safe for use during pregnancy.

    Its seems that HCQ has a positive effect for everything but COVID-19!

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    Sceptical Sam

    Thank you Jo.

    What else can anybody say?

    Corruption of science has now become corruption of medical science.

    It’s bad enough that “The Lancet” runs an anti-Trump editorial (what the devil has it to do with medical research?) but the fact that it also runs such a hit-piece on HCQ and backed by “Big Pharma”, says it all.

    What price integrity?

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    Lance

    Meanwhile, Brazil is about to dethrone Russia as the second place most infected in the world and we are barely testing.

    Brazil probably surpassed the US already, as they are testing like crazy and we aren’t. Good job, Great Lord comrade Jair Bolsonaro.

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    Furiously curious

    Here is a list of all the HCQ cocktail trials known, from a US organisation. I cant find a study I read a few days ago, by the WHO, from 2018, looking at all known HCQ studies from way back, looking for problems. The conclusion was, there were none. I’ll keep looking for it. It’s a pretty seminal study.

    https://drive.google.com/file/d/1w6p_HqRXCrW0_wYNK7m_zpQLbBVYcvVU/view

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    ralf ellis

    .
    The UK’s NHS has started a study with 10,000 medical staff taking HCQ, to see if it acts as a prophylactic against Cov-19.

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8342933/UK-frontline-workers-given-hydroxychloroquine-clinical-trial.html

    Would the (very conservative) NHS do this study if HCQ if there was no evidence for its effectiveness, or if it was really thought to be dangerous.?

    As an aside Chloroquine, its sister drug, has been used since 1830. And it was soon discovered that it tasted much better with some gin. The ubiquitous G&T.

    R

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    William Astley

    Zinc stops the covid virus and the entire class of viruses that must connect the ACE-2 molecule in our cells from replicating.

    It appears, ‘Vitamin’ D turns on a natural system which enables a tiny amount of zinc to get into our cells. HCQ is a Zinc ionophore, it also gets the positive Zinc +2 ion into our negatively charged cells.

    ‘Vitamin’ D is safer to use than HCQ and correcting the population’s vitamin D deficiency is a logical thing to do as it reduces our countries health care cost by more than 60%,

    The Medical industry is only one industry. What we need is support from other industries that have power. We are heading toward economic collapse and take over by China, if we do not change the future.

    https://www.breitbart.com/europe/2020/05/24/italy-one-in-three-businesses-will-not-reopen-after-lockdown/

    ROME — ….that nearly a third of the country’s businesses will not reopen and millions remain without work or income.

    Of the establishments that have reopened, 68 per cent acknowledge to be working so far at a loss, and more than a third (37 per cent) report more that sales are only half of their normal level, with only 17 per cent saying they have maintained revenue levels equal to the pre-virus period.

    During the higher ‘Vitamin’ D research which included a cohort that were getting calcium supplements in addition to ‘Vitamin’ D, it was found that Vegetarians were modulating calcium levels in their bodies correctly and non-vegetarians were not.

    It was determined that it was unsafe to continue the research without giving all participants Magnesium.

    The only reason Magnesium supplements was allowed to be added to the experiment, by the US FDA, was to keep it secret that we were all Magnesium deficient.

    The finding of severe magnesium deficient in the US population, proved that almost all older meat eaters were severely magnesium deficient.

    As I noted above, almost Vegetarians are severely Zinc deficient if they do not take Zinc supplements. The highest source of zinc is grain fed beef. Steak, not hamburger.

    The Zinc deficiency, the high Zinc content of more expensive meats, and the fact that rich people take winter holidays in sunny warm places explains why rich people are significantly, ‘healthier’ than poor people.

    Mineral deficiencies become more severe as we age because we eat less food.

    If the game has not fixed, the studies listed below and the finding that there are three times more black deaths than white deaths due to Covid, listed below should have changed everything.

    https://www.grassrootshealth.net/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/McDonnell-2018-breast-cancer-GRH.pdf

    The proportion with breast cancer was 78% lower for >60 ng/ml vs <20 ng/ml (P = 0.02). Third, multivariate Cox regression revealed that women with 25(OH)D concentrations 60 ng/ml had an 80% lower risk of breast cancer than women with concentrations <20 ng/ml (HR = 0.20, P = 0.03), adjusting for age, BMI, smoking status, calcium supplement intake, and study of origin.

    https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3585561

    Patterns of COVID-19 Mortality and Vitamin D: An Indonesian Study

    With reference to normal cases, Vitamin D insufficient cases were approximately 12.55 times more likely to die (OR=12.55; p<0.001) while Vitamin D deficient cases were approximately 19.12 times more likely to die from the disease (OR=19.12; p50% lower in Grassroots Health cohort with median serum 25–hydroxyvitamin D of 41 ng/ml than in NHANES cohort with median of 22 ng/ml

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      Rolf

      Vitamin-D has limited function as an Ionophore. But there is an alternative. Quercetin do the job just as well as Hydroxychloroquine.

      That means a good preventive is Q+Zinc and Vitamin D3. Infection will occur but should be Milder.

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    Kevin a

    Did Japan Just Beat the Virus Without Lockdowns or Mass Testing?
    “Looks like it”
    https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-05-22/did-japan-just-beat-the-virus-without-lockdowns-or-mass-testing

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      el gordo

      This could prove embarrassing for Morrison.

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      Lance

      Japan did not enforce lockdowns, but people welded themselves at home anyway,as some did in Sweden as well. Stupid Brazilians genuinely BELIEVE that Sweden is 100% normal and want to copy them, EXCEPT all the social distancing and self-isolation people are doing there because they are wealthy and they can afford to stay home for more than 24 hours (Bolsonaro discovered that Brazil is such a miserable place that some people need to work as they need to breathe, one day stop and they’re DEAD).

      https://youtu.be/V6sC43vrpnU

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    Harold

    Countries which use hydroxychloroquine combo as early treatment since beginning of pandemic

    Russia total cases 344481, total deaths 3541, deaths per million pop 24, fatality rate 1.0%

    Quatar total cases 43714, total deaths 23, deaths per million pop 8, fatality rate 0.05%

    Country which does not use hydroxychloroquine

    UK total cases 259559, total deaths 36793, deaths per million pop 542, fatality rate 14.2%

    (IHU) Méditerranée Infection under professor Raoult who was first to use HCQ combo for early treatment
    https://www.mediterranee-infection.com/covid-19/
    18 deaths for 3308 patients – fatality rate 0.5%

    Conclusion – places unaffected by western politics and Big Pharma using early intervention with cheap off patent medication which is shown to work have low hospitalization and deaths.

    PEOPLE DIDN’T HAVE TO DIE!!

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  • #
    Deplorable Lord Kek

    thanks to the left, everything is political now.

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  • #
    Kevin a

    Many US states have seen LOWER infection rates after ending lockdowns that are are now destroying millions of livelihoods worldwide, JP Morgan study claims
    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8347901/US-states-LOWER-infection-rates-lockdowns-end-study-claims.html

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  • #
    DonS

    Hi Jo

    I agree. We need a bigger study untainted by the political games that seem so rife within the academic establishment at present. However it all strikes me as being a bit too late to start studying something once it has gotten out of control. HCQ, zinc, vitamin A,B,C,D and whatever all sounds like people grasping desperately at straws in an emergency.

    I don’t know if HCQ is good for this virus or not but it will take as you say Jo a properly setup and executed study to find out. You might get the funding for that now but imagine if 12 months ago you put in a funding grant application to study the effects of HQC on corona viruses. What chances would you have had then? Not good I would guess.

    Government grants should only be available for basic research with the private sector picking up the bill (and profits) for the applied side of the exercise. Sadly it seems grants committees now are more interested in picking winners, or more usually, politically correct lines of research than they are in promoting good scientific investigation.

    I suppose there is more virtue to be gained at dinner parties explaining how you funded a study into the effect of global warming on cocktail prawns than into a study of some luminous slime at the bottom of the sea or some other such obscure field.

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    Betapug

    Trump’s other musing about his briefing notes, mentioned speed with which bleaches inactivate Covid virus, sparked the same deliberate twisting to say he had advocated injecting or drinking Clorox.
    In fact hydrogen peroxide is the bleaching ingredient in most whitening mouthwashes on the market and the American Dental Association recommends a rinse with 1% peroxide prior to all procedures to lower viral loads. It is also useful as a gargle.
    https://www.isds.org/news-details/2020/03/16/isds-issues-recommendations-for-dental-offices-regarding-covid-19

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    Russ Wetherill

    Hydroxychloroquine functions to disrupt SARS-Cov-2, and minimize Covid-19 symptoms, in at least 9 relevant ways, by my count:

    1. Allows zinc into cell to disrupt
    virus replication (ionophore)
    2. Blocks hemoglobin catabolism
    Catabolism =
    hemoglobin >> heme + iron
    Reduces iron damage to lung tissue
    3. Suppresses innate immune sys.
    Macrophages inhibited and slows adaptive arm over-response by minimizing cytokine and chemokine release.
    4. Changes cell PH (more basic) to
    decrease viral replication
    5. Makes cell wall less permeable to
    entry. Endosome acidification.
    6. Alters ACE2 cell receptor to make
    cell entry more difficult for virus
    7. Reduces blood glucose levels
    Used as anti diabetic drug in India.
    Reduces degradation of insulin.
    Zinc also reduces blood glucose (unknown if augmented effect by combination, at least additive). Helps DM patients.
    8. Reduces endothelial inflammation, van willebrand factor, thrombosis and clotting by slowing disease progression, and minimizing cytokine cascade.
    9. QT Prolongation
    Normal 500ms
    Hydroxychloroquine + zpak
    increase. QT by + 60ms
    Harmful? Not nececessarily for for low baseline QT intervals, and only if results in arhythmias. 40yr safety record and no FDA black box warnings for use in 3 indications makes QT interval argument specious.

    I score it as 8 for, and 1 against (QT interval concern only in a subset of late-stage, susceptible patients).

    All this, yet Fauci declares an unproven antiviral, Remdicivir, the new standard of care, hmmm…

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    Yonason

    “Hydroxycholoroquine is useful in a preventative way, we should already see that effect in countries and groups who use it regularly — like Lupus patients or people with Rheumatoid arthritis or who live in malaria-zones. It seems strange there isn’t more information on that available, but perhaps some readers here have seen some?

    Yes

    https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2020/04/media-lied-people-died-italian-study-finds-incredible-prophylaxis-results-patients-hydroxychloroquine/

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    Yonason

    UPDATE

    “Lancet Retracts”
    https://theconservativetreehouse.com/2020/06/04/lancet-retracts-medical-study-critical-of-hydroxychloroquine-designed-for-political-purposes/

    A link provided there.
    https://www.medicineuncensored.com/a-study-out-of-thin-air

    What’s the old saying, something about the truth not getting it’s pants on until the lies have circled the globe a few times?

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