Posted on 03/27/2020 7:57:17 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
President Trump has turned to a French virologist with a history of criticizing climate science to offer the world hope amid the novel coronavirus pandemic.
Last week, Trump tweeted that the combination of two medicines could dramatically alter the often deadly course of COVID-19.
"HYDROXYCHLOROQUINE & AZITHROMYCIN, taken together, have a real chance to be one of the biggest game changers in the history of medicine," Trump wrote. He then cited a study published in the International Journal of Antimicrobial Agents that afforded little time for peer review.
Trump's optimism comes from a small study of about 40 COVID-19 patients in France, though it wasn't immediately clear how it came to the president's attention.
The study was conducted by Didier Raoult, a virologist at Aix-Marseille University in France. Raoult has a history of challenging science outside of his field of expertise, including claims that Darwin's theory of evolution was wrong and that climate models are overblown.
"Climate predictions are absurd," he wrote in a 2013 piece for a French publication, Le Point, in which Raoult declared he "hates climate forecasts."
According to a French-to-English translation, he wrote that those who take action against climate change — as well as those who do the research to examine it — have taken "more of a religious approach than a science."
"Our sense of guilt explains the transformation of the debate into something of an unscientific nature," he wrote.
While Raoult has no climate credentials, he is an influential virologist who has discovered dozens of bacteria. Raoult also has been critical of how governments have responded to the global pandemic, and he published a book this month called "Epidemics, Real Dangers and False Alarms."
In it, he blames the media for instilling fear about COVID-19. "This panic is largely due to the exaggerations of the press, which knows that fear 'sells,'" he wrote.
It remains to be seen if Raoult has discovered a useful — and potentially lifesaving — drug regime to combat the coronavirus, health experts caution. They include Dr. Anthony Fauci, a member of Trump's coronavirus task force who said researchers don't know yet if the drugs are safe for people with the coronavirus.
Health ethicists say Raoult's work, and other small studies, should not be reflexively touted as a cure — particularly by politicians looking to give people an unverified sense of hope.
Hydroxychloroquine is a derivative of an anti-malaria drug, and azithromycin is an antibiotic used to treat bacterial pneumonia.
Raoult, an influential virologist who has received funding from the French government, published a video in February called "Coronavirus: Endgame!" in which he explored Chinese experiments with hydroxychloroquine.
He quickly tested it on a small group of French COVID-19 patients in a local hospital earlier this month and, along with a group of co-authors, published his research March 20, after a day of peer review, in the International Journal of Antimicrobial Agents.
The study recommended that all COVID-19 patients be treated with the drug cocktail, even though no larger regime of testing has been conducted.
Malarial drugs can have significant side effects in some patients, including retinal failure and cardiac arrest. Despite the dramatic pronouncement that hundreds of thousands of coronavirus patients should be administered the drugs, Raoult and his co-authors acknowledged the limitations of their research.
"Our study has some limitations including a small sample size, limited long-term outcome follow-up, and dropout of six patients from the study, however in the current context, we believe that our results should be shared with the scientific community," they wrote.
A study published this week in the Journal of Zhejiang University in China contradicted the Raoult study and found that hydroxychloroquine was not any more effective than conventional coronavirus treatment. Both studies rely on a small group of patients.
The embrace of limited-research results by politicians can be dangerous, said Alison Bateman-House, a health ethicist and professor of population health at New York University.
She said there is precedent for taking unproven research when other options are not available but that it should not be touted by politicians as a solution before that is proved.
"It's incredibly irresponsible, and it's not something any leader should be doing," she said. "If you're not a physician, you shouldn't be opining on medical care."
Not conducting research with clear guidelines means the end result may not provide the scientific backing that is needed to use the treatment on a wider scale, said Bateman-House.
"If you're not giving people these medications in a well-structured, thought-out trial that has the support and capabilities necessary to collecting the data, then you're not advancing the science, all you're getting is more anecdotal evidence," she said.
Nonetheless, Trump and Vice President Mike Pence have spent days touting this option.
"Doctors can now prescribe chloroquine for that off-label purpose of dealing with the symptoms of coronavirus," Pence told reporters Saturday. "The president's very optimistic."
Those claims may have contributed to a run on the drugs throughout the world.
Pharmacies across Africa, where malarial medications often are a matter of life or death, saw a high demand for the drug.
And the pressure to obtain the drugs in the United States has become so severe that pharmacy boards in Idaho, Kentucky, Ohio, Nevada, Oklahoma, North Carolina and Texas have issued new guidance on how the drugs should be administered, according to a New York Times article.
The Washington Post reported yesterday that Mark Meadows, Trump's incoming chief of staff, reached out to a family doctor in upstate New York who said he has used the drugs to treat hundreds of suspected coronavirus cases.
Conservative media outlets and Fox News host Sean Hannity have touted the work of that family doctor from New York, Vladimir Zelenko. Zelenko has also used his Facebook page to say that China is using the coronavirus as a population control device.
At least one state, however, is giving the drugs a chance.
New York is now conducting a large-scale experiment, distributing the drug throughout its hospital networks to try on sick patients, and Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D) has ordered hundreds of thousands of doses. The Food and Drug Administration, at Trump's urging, has rapidly approved the testing.
Raoult is confident his work will hold up.
"In my field, I am a star, worldwide," Raoult told the La Provence newspaper in France. "I don't give a damn what others think. I am not an outsider. I'm streaks ahead of the others."
Entirely fake news.
We had strong hints of the effectiveness of Hydroxychloroquine because of the passengers on the quarantined cruise ships before Peppe Le Piew entered the equation. That’s not his discovery.
Trump pins Coronavirus hope on the work of someone who actually understands statistics.
There. Fixed it.
My first thought as well
“If you’re not a physician, you shouldn’t be opining on medical care.”
The governors of NV and MI are doctors? So, THAT’s how they can prohibit testing.
Irresponsible to offer “false” hope? How about irresponsible to foment hysteria and hopelessness with ginned-up false predictions?
he is an influential virologist
And the article seems to be a hit piece on how this doctor opines on stuff outside of his field without somehow mentioning that is actually is his field that we are talking about, you know, the one where he is a very respected and influential virologist.
It also fails to mention other studies that support his position, his own acknowledgment of the need to get more data on these drugs, other countries doing trials, or anything that would support his position. Instead, the tone of the article is yet another "orange man bad, so what orange man say must also be bad."
Let's just take one item. The article suggests that the study was conducted solely by Didier Raoult. But the actual paper published has many authors. Here they are:
Philippe Gautret,Jean-Christophe Lagier,Philippe Parola,Van Thuan Hoang,Line Meddeb,Morgane Mailhe, Barbara Doudier, Johan Courjon, Valérie Giordanengo, Vera Esteves Vieira, Hervé Tissot Dupont, Stéphane Honoré, Philippe Colson, Eric Chabrière, Bernard La Scola, Jean-Marc Rolain, Philippe Brouqui, and Didier Raoult.
I am sure an intrepid journalist looking into the unrelated opinions of the other 17 authors would find they had a great diversity of opinions. But that doesn't alter the underlying data they collected, or the experimental result they reported. Contrary to the idiotic mindset of the typical left wing propagandist, PCR DNA analyzers don't change their results based on feelings. That's why doctors, engineers, and real scientists rely on the proven scientific method to determine facts.
Do you remember more details, or have any links to publications?
The French team doesn't claim that they discovered the idea, it was tried also with SARS. They just ran a small but well structured clinical test.
Nevandan governor is committing murder by fiat by outlawing meds that can control the Covid19. Suck it up Dems, you put the bum in office.
Govnas of NY and Ca. put Sancturary cities the law of the day but forgot to medically vet illegal aliens. Now their dumb constituents are paying for it with their lives. Suck it up!
The left wing anti-Trump media is working against the nation's response to a viral epidemic. That tells you a lot about what is important to them.
I think the headline is missing the word “change.” Otherwise, a “climate skeptic” is someone who questions if there’s an atmosphere and weather related events.
I didn’t get a lot of details, just chatted with someone on a forum who had been one of the people who were on hydroxychloroquine. They had never felt in any danger during the cruise.
“If you’re not a physician, you shouldn’t be opining on medical care.”
_______________
I like it, which means journalists should not opine on anything. Hence, this article is trash. The stupid never see how stupid they are.
"A study published this week in the Journal of Zhejiang University in China contradicted the Raoult study and found that hydroxychloroquine was not any more effective than conventional coronavirus treatment."
They repeat the conclusions of a Chinese study which may well be a Chinese dis-information effort due to its extremely poor experimental design. Assuming the paper is truthful at all, it represents a laughably bad experimental design.
The cited Chinese study compared the effect of the drug treatment compared to a control group, but the patients they were testing were already essentially recovered from the virus. As the Chinese researchers reported:
"The median duration from hospitalization to virus nucleic acid negative conservation was 4 (1-9) days in HCQ group, which is comparable to that in the control group 2 (1-4) days..."
But no one is reporting that hospitalized COVID-19 patients are recovered and virus free within a median time of 2 days, with some recovering in 1 day, and the longest recovering in 4 days. The patients in the control group had already recovered from the virus. Similarly, the treated patients, except for the 9 day patient, recovered in a median time of 4 days, with one of the patients recovering in one day.
Those patients were already recovering too. So an experiment based on giving a medication to patients who are already almost recovered is pointless, or intentionally designed to be misleading.
Here is the Chinese study they cited
Good choice
RE: “The median duration from hospitalization to virus nucleic acid negative conservation was 4 (1-9) days in HCQ group, which is comparable to that in the control group 2 (1-4) days...”
According to TechCrunch ( who also used a similar headline but cited the same study you posted):
“The study, which included 30 patients with a control of 15 who received no treatment, with the other half being treated with hydroxychloroquine, showed that there was a statistically insignificant difference in the number of patients who tested negative for the drug after a week.
During the study, those who received conventional treatment were provided anti-virals that are currently recommended for use in China, including Iopinavir and ritonavir. After a week, 13 of the 15 control patients showed no sign of the virus, while 14 of the 15 who were treated with hydroxychloroquine showed the same.”
So, what do we see?
One group DID use antivirals: including Iopinavir and ritonavir and 13 of the 15 patients showed no signs of the virus.
While the other group used Hydroxycholoroqune ( no mention of combo with Azithromycin ) and 14 of the 15 showed no signs of the virus.
So, the conclusion should really be — THE CHEAPER, WELL KNOWN ANTI-MALARIAL DRUG IS SLIGHTLY MORE EFFECTIVE THAN STANDARD AND MORE EXPENSIVE ANTI-VIRALS.
E&E News is pro green new deal/climate change etc.
They claim to focus on energy and environment. What makes them experts on virology? Nothing.
Just another left wing propaganda site.
What is telling is how invested the left is in causing mayhem with this virus/crisis. They are scared that a cure might be found quickly and cheaply.
Its obvious that this is Russia/Muller -> Ukraine/Impeachment -> Depression 2.0/Get Trump.
RE: I think the headline is missing the word “change.” Otherwise, a “climate skeptic” is someone who questions if there’s an atmosphere and weather related events.
How about the more accurate term: MAN-MADE CLIMATE CHANGE?
That’s what the argument is about really — should we overhaul the economy and get rid of all fossil fuels in order to prevent our climate from warming?
It used to be called AGW, for Anthropogenic global warming.
Maybe we should call it ACC.
That’s “NevaDUHns’ to you buddy.
Or, alternatively, both the control group anti-viral treatment and the hydroxychloroquine treatment achieved astonishing results - ending a COVID-19 infection with a median cure time of 2 to 4 days, and in some cases in one day -- meaning after a single medication dose.
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