Study finds hydroxychloroquine helped coronavirus patients survive better. – Bing images
By Maggie Fox, Andrea Kane, and Elizabeth Cohen, CNN 7/3/2020
A surprising new study found that the controversial antimalarial drug hydroxychloroquine helped patients better survive in the hospital.
A team at Henry Ford Health System in Southeast Michigan said Thursday its study of 2,541 hospitalized patients found that those given hydroxychloroquine were much less likely to die.
Dr. Marcus Zervos, division head of infectious disease for Henry Ford Health System, said 26% of those not given hydroxychloroquine died, compared to 13% of those who got the drug. The team looked back at everyone treated in
the hospital system since the first patient in March.
“Overall crude mortality rates were 18.1% in the entire cohort, 13.5% in the hydroxychloroquine alone group, 20.1% among those receiving hydroxychloroquine plus azithromycin, 22.4% among the azithromycin alone group, and 26.4% for neither drug,” the team wrote in a report published in
the International Journal of Infectious Diseases.
It’s a surprising finding because several other studies have found no benefit from hydroxychloroquine, a drug originally developed to treat and prevent malaria. President Donald Trump touted the drug heavily, but later studies found not only did patients not do better if they got the drug, they were more likely to suffer cardiac side effects.
The US Food and Drug Administration withdrew its emergency use authorization for the drug earlier this month and trials around the world, including trials sponsored by the World Health Organization and the National Institutes of Health, were halted.
“Our results do differ from some other studies,” Zervos told a news conference.
“What we think was important in ours … is that patients were treated early.
For hydroxychloroquine to have a benefit, it needs to begin before the patients begin to suffer some of the severe immune reactions that patients can have with Covid,” he added.
The Henry Ford team also monitored patients carefully for heart problems,
he said. “The combination of hydroxychloroquine plus azithromycin was reserved for selected patients with severe COVID-19 and with minimal cardiac risk factors,” the team wrote. The Henry Ford team said they believe their findings show hydroxychloroquine could be potentially useful as a treatment for coronavirus.
“It’s important to note that in the right settings, this potentially could be a lifesaver for patients,” Dr. Steven Kalkanis, CEO of the Henry Ford Medical Group, said at the news conference.
Kalkanis said that their findings do not necessarily contradict those of earlier studies. “We also want to make the point that just because our results differ from some others that may have been published, it doesn’t make those studies wrong or definitely a conflict. What it simply means is that by looking at the nuanced data of which patients actually benefited and when, we might be able to further unlock the code of how this disease works,” he said.
“Much more work needs to be done to elucidate what the final treatment plan should be for Covid-19,” Kalkanis added. “But we feel … that these are critically important results to add to the mix of how we move forward if there’s a second surge, and in relevant other parts of the world. Now we can help people combat this disease and to reduce the mortality rate.”
Zervos said hydroxychloroquine can help interfere with the virus directly and
also reduces inflammation. Researchers not involved with the study were critical. They noted that the Henry Ford team did not randomly treat patients but selected them for various treatments based on certain criteria.
“As the Henry Ford Health System became more experienced in treating patients with COVID-19, survival may have improved, regardless of the use of specific therapies,” Dr. Todd Lee of the Royal Victoria Hospital in Montreal, Canada, and colleagues wrote in a commentary in the same journal.
“White House trade adviser Peter Navarro is leading a Trump administration effort to demand the FDA reverse course,” the Washington Post reported.
“A reversal (on hydroxychloroquine) would be widely seen as bending to the political will of the White House,” the Washington Post quoted Steven Joffe,
a medical ethicist at the University of Pennsylvania, as saying.
As the agency will take the lead in approving a vaccine for the coronavirus
in the country, “Health experts say it is important for the agency, which was criticized for its initial decision to okay hydroxychloroquine in March, to guard its credibility as it prepares to make these landmark decisions for a public sometimes skeptical of vaccines,” the report warned in The controversial study.
However, the new study, which Navarro is armed with and suggests hydroxychloroquine effective in treating COVID-19, has been widely criticized as flawed by scientists. Led by a research team from Henry Ford Health System in southeast Michigan, U.S., the study looked at 2,541 hospitalized COVID-19 patients between March 10 and May 2 and found that those who took hydroxychloroquine had a “significantly” lower mortality rate.
Dr. Todd Lee said the results of the Henry Ford study were relevant with the use of steroids, which was found effective in reducing the risk of death among severe COVID-19 cases.
The research also excluded 267 patients who had not been discharged from the hospital, which might make the drug “look better than it really was,” said Eli Rosenberg, associate professor in the Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics at the University at Albany.
Organizations like the World Health Organization and the National Institutes of Health have also halted relevant trials of the drug, saying it produces little or no effectiveness to hospitalized COVID-19 patients.
“Finally, concomitant steroid use in patients receiving hydroxychloroquine
was more than double the non-treated group. This is relevant considering the recent RECOVERY trial that showed a mortality benefit with dexamethasone.” The steroid dexamethasone can reduce inflammation in seriously ill patients.
The Henry Ford team wrote 82% of their patients received hydroxychloroquine within the first 24 hours of admission, and 91% within the first 48 hours of admission. They wrote that in comparison, a study of patients at 25 New York hospitals started taking the drug “at any time during their hospitalization.”
But patients in that New York study, published in May in the Journal of the American Medical Association, started taking hydroxychloroquine on average one day after being hospitalized. “Maybe there’s a little bit of a difference, but it’s not like patients in New York were being started on day seven.
That’s not what happened,” said Eli Rosenberg, lead author of the New York study and an associate professor of epidemiology at the University at Albany School of Public Health.
Rosenberg also pointed out that the Detroit paper excluded 267 patients — nearly 10% of the study population — who had not yet been discharged from the hospital.
He said this might have skewed the results to make hydroxychloroquine look better than it really was. Those patients might have still been in the hospital because they were very sick, and if they died, excluding them from the study made hydroxychloroquine look like more of a lifesaver than it really was.
Both the Detroit and New York studies were observational: they looked back at how patients did when doctors prescribed hydroxychloroquine. While helpful, observational studies are not as valuable as controlled clinical trials. Considered the gold standard in medicine, patients in a clinical trial are randomly assigned to take either the drug or a placebo, which is a treatment that does nothing. Doctors then follow the patients to see how they fare.
Two clinical trials on hydroxychloroquine for Covid-19, one in the US and one in the UK, were stopped early because their data suggested hydroxychloroquine wasn’t helpful. The US trial, run by the National Institutes of Health, enrolled more than 470 patients. The UK trial, run by the University of Oxford, enrolled more than 11,000 patients.
“We have concluded that there is no beneficial effect of hydroxychloroquine in patients hospitalized with COVID-19,” the Oxford doctors concluded. But a White House official praised the Henry Ford team’s study.
Peter Navarro, the White House trade adviser, said the study shows hydroxychloroquine works if given early enough. “This is a big deal,” he told CNN. “This medicine can literally save tens of thousands, perhaps hundreds
of thousands of American lives and maybe millions of people worldwide.”
“Social distancing may have weakened children’s immune systems,”
experts say… “End of social distancing and mask-wearing could
leave children vulnerable to common bugs?”
Scientists are concerned that measures to combat Covid-19 have weakened
the immune systems of young children who have not been able to build up resistance to common bugs, leaving them vulnerable when mask-wearing and social distancing eventually end. Contact with viral pathogens happens on a fairly regular basis and although it does not always lead to sickness, the exposure helps shore the immune system against the threat should the bugs
be encountered again.
Over the past 14 months or so, protracted restrictions on mixing and travel, alongside mask-wearing and social distancing, have not only reduced the risk of Covid but other respiratory bugs such as the flu – cases of which were basically nonexistent last winter, according to surveillance data largely encompassing England compiled by the Royal College of GPs (RCGP).
However, virologists are concerned about RSV, a virus that can cause serious lung infections requiring hospital admission, and sometimes even death, in children under the age of one – and for which there are no approved vaccines.
“Flu worries me, but there is a vaccine – and so the most vulnerable will still have access to the vaccines,” said Dr. Catherine Moore, consultant clinical scientist for Public Health Wales. She warned that RSV currently has no vaccine. “Whereas what Covid has done has caused a big issue in our adult ICUs, we may see conversely problems in our pediatric hospitalizations and intensive care,” she said.
Pre-Covid, most children encountered most seasonal viruses before they turned 18 months old. But the biggest influx in pediatric hospital wards each winter are babies under the age of one who have for the first time been infected with RSV – because their lungs are not well developed, their bodies struggle to fight off the infection, explained Moore.
Scientists are worried that if life begins to go back to pre-Covid normality, respiratory viruses that typically circulate every winter will return alongside
the coronavirus. Moore said she was particularly worried about the risk of
RSV in young children. “We’ve got two cohorts now of children who’ve never met the virus, so they are susceptible, but there’s two years’ worth of them!”
Before the pandemic, data suggested more than 30,000 babies and children under five were admitted to hospital every year in the UK because of RSV. Assuming “normality” resumes later this year, “we are preparing for a significant impact in pediatrics”, said Moore. According to the RCGP, a few cases of RSV were detected last month, which is atypical given the virus normally circulates in the winter in the UK.
“Late May RSV is very unusual,” said Deenan Pillay, a professor of virology
at University College London and a member of the Independent Sage group.
It may be a reflection of more immunological susceptibility, the fact that some Covid restrictions have been relaxed, or indeed a change in the seasonal behavior of the virus in response to the persistent collective effort to address Covid, he said.
But there are many unknowns and it is hard to predict exactly what will happen in the winter with RSV and other pathogens, said William Irving, a professor of virology from the University of Nottingham. “We didn’t see the flu last winter so if it comes back this coming winter, it may be particularly nasty.”
However, there is a flu vaccine that could stave off a considerable chunk of disease, the scientists said, acknowledging that they are hoping the experience of Covid will enhance the uptake of the flu vaccine. “I would think that it would be a good idea to maybe combine a flu vaccine with a booster dose of the [Covid] vaccine,” said Irving. Efforts to develop a Covid-flu combination vaccine are already under way.
CDC announces that “social distancing may have weakened children’s immune systems…”
No shit Sherlock… Social distancing, masks, locked in homes no school will have done unrepairable damage to immune systems mental health and education for generations to come.
As More and more Covid info will be coming out, proving how absurd the handling of it has been… using all that hand sanitizer. Which they found that out in the seventies when everybody was doing that more people getting sick they’re killing all the germs that you need to build your immune system.
So does wearing a mask because of all the carbon dioxide exhaled, then inhaled again.
These geniuses are way behind the curve!!!
If only the human body had a way to learn how to fight off diseases. Well, no shit!
It’s like parents who keep their kids home because there is a family history of asthma.
Good GOD ALMIGHTY… YOU gotta build up an immune system.
It’s not good to screw with Mother Nature!
Virtue signaling at all levels needs to stop.
Virtue Signaling WILL Destroy The Environment
It has become popular to describe certain behavior as ‘virtue signaling’.
By this people mean, in the words of James Bartholomew (who helped to popularize the term, and who I like very much in every other respect),
writing or saying things ‘to indicate that they are virtuous’. As popular as it is, it’s a stupid term that misuses the concepts it invokes, it encourages lazy thinking, and it’s hypocritical.
The term signaling does not mean the same thing as ‘saying’ or ‘showing off’ when it is used by economists or biologists. Signaling means credibly giving information that is difficult to prove just by saying it. For example, banks used to have very grand buildings. Any bank could claim to be safe, but only a bank that had lots of money could afford a grand office.
Education is a classic example of signaling.
It’s difficult to show to a potential employer that you’re smart and hard working, but only smart and hard working people can get a good university degree (in theory). Good university degrees might be partially about signaling ability to potential employers.
That’s what signaling is. It’s a very useful concept. It means exactly the opposite of what virtue signaling means – it’s credible and honest. The whole point of virtue signaling is that it’s disingenuous and cheap. A better term would be ‘showing off’. How many times where the term virtue signaling has been used would ‘showing off’ not have just as accurately sufficed? It’s not exactly a novel concept.
For something to actually be virtue signaling, rather than just showing off, it would need some sort of sacrifice, like a sacrifice of knowledge by pretending some obvious falsehood is true.
The other problem with the term is that it assumes your opponents are disingenuous.
This is of course very common but it is probably the single worst thing about political debate. It comes from an underlying assumption that the world is straightforward and your views are obviously correct.
To many people it’s obvious that letting Syrian refugees in to Britain is a bad idea, because if even a few of them are terrorists we’re endangering our own people’s lives. The people who ignore this are most likely trying to show off how much they care and what good people they are – hence virtue signaling.
To many people it’s obvious that welfare cuts are cruel and unnecessary, and indeed hold back the recovery by taking money out of the economy. If you support those cuts you’re putting ideology ahead of real people, and that makes you a heartless scumbag.
But it’s possible to disagree honestly and sincerely about complicated questions with lots of different moving parts. In a world as complex as libertarians say, it would be astonishing if the truth was obvious about almost any contentious policy issue. Disagreeing with me and being a bit right-on does not mean you are disingenuous. Voting Labor while not spending your life doing volunteer work doesn’t either, nor does being a libertarian but not signing up to join an anarcho-capitalist sea stead.
Giving money to wasteful charities might count as virtue signaling,
but only if you know that the charities are wasteful. I suspect most virtue signaling accusers assume that it’s obvious that groups like Fairtrade are wasteful or harmful. In fact it probably doesn’t even cross most people’s minds that that might be the case.
Accusing others of virtue signaling encourages you to not interrogate your
own beliefs. If you think people only disagree with you because they’re trying to show off how nice they are to their mates, why would you even consider that what’s obvious to you might actually be wrong? As well as being rude and stupid, virtue signaling gives people another mental shortcut to dogmatism.
Finally, saying virtue signaling is hypocritical. It’s often used to try to show that the accuser is above virtue signaling and that their own arguments really are sincere. Of course, this is really just another example of virtue signaling!Dismissing other people’s false beliefs as virtue signaling means you won’t consider them properly and means they have every right to do the same to your beliefs, which as far as they’re concerned are also obviously false. Sometimes beliefs are honestly, sincerely held, however stupid they seem to you, and if there’s any value to debate at all it requires that we at least consider the possibility that we might be the stupid ones.
At best, virtue signalling is a pretentious way of saying ‘showing off’.
At worst, it is mental armour against self-doubt. People should stop saying it.
When the entire world is having the exact same issues at the exact same time and you still can’t see what is happening….WAKE UP!
More dangerous ‘delta’ strain now classified ‘variant of concern’ in U.S.—
here’s what that means for you.
Video: Fauci: Vaccine might not get US sufficient level of immunity.
When the death toll from the vaccine surpasses rona’s total,
at the rate people are dropping….sadly it won’t be long…
Alina Chan, a top virus and virologist at the Silver lab at the Harvard School of Medicine admits ‘Lying to American Public’ for months on likely Wuhan Lab Leak Theory because they didn’t want to be associated with President Trump. HCQ was no secret. Fauci, in league with the CDC, quashed it to promote the pandemic scare for the purpose of easily corrupted mail-in voting.
He killed hundreds of thousands to achieve his leftist agenda.
In 1947 Germany he’d be on the gallows. Fauci is also heavily invested in vaccine manufacturers and they couldn’t get emergency use authorization to sell their vaccines if a treatment existed, so he stood to make a LOT of money by denying the efficacy of HCQ, in addition to making the orange man look bad.
In part. It was more about big $$ bucks. An effective treatment would have prevented the EUA which in turn would have meant no fat profits for Fauci & his drug pals. The CDC has been exaggerating flu deaths for decades to push the flu vax. Nothing new here.
Dr Lee Merritt: If you’re younger than 39 and get vaccinated, you are 260 times more likely to die from COVID-19. #CrimesAgainstHumanity #CrimesAgainstHumanity
Anthony Fauci Ignored Email from Physicist Claiming Hydroxychloroquine
Could Help Battle Coronavirus – True Pundit – WITSNEWS
The Most Iconic & Cringe-Worthy Moments in Late-Night Talk Shows’ History.