RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/stacey-lennox/2020/05/14/new-hydroxychloroquine-trial-could-be-destined-to-fail-n392407

The politicization of hydroxychloroquine has been one of the most frustrating aspects of Trump Derangement Syndrome during this pandemic. Early studies in France and clinical outcomes from multiple treating physicians using a combination therapy that included the drug provided hope to combat the virus. However, it made President Trump hopeful, so it had to be obliterated.

Crappy studies of the drug given to the most severe patients were touted as proof the president was wrong. Then there was Fish Tank Cleaner Gate. This is the problem with political reporters covering press briefings about a pandemic. They either aren’t provided an internet connection by their employers or are too lazy to do 15 minutes of research.

Now, the NIH has finally announced it will begin a clinical trial using hydroxychloroquine and azithromycin in COVID-19 patients with mild to moderate symptoms. Every clinician who has advocated hydroxychloroquine-azithromycin has said this is the appropriate stage of the disease to use the drug combination. Dr. Vladimir Zelenko began giving it to diagnosed and presumed COVID-19 patients during a severe outbreak in New Rochelle, New York. He started the drug when patients were suffering from mild shortness of breath.

Dr. Anthony Cardillo also explained how he effectively used the drug. His method was to give the medicine with azithromycin and zinc for a specific biological reason. This mineral needs to be added to the NIH trial based on volumes of scientific research on how it works in combination with hydroxychloroquine. Cardillo explained it succinctly:

“It was actually the hydroxychloroquine opening up a channel in the cellular membranes allowing zinc to come into the cells,” he said, “And we do know high levels of zinc inside of the cell that’s infected with the virus shuts down that viral replication machinery.”

The reaction to hydroxychloroquine was very perplexing. The NIH studied drug’s older cousin chloroquine following the SARS epidemic. In 2005 the NIH noted chloroquine had both prophylactic effects for prevention and anti-viral effects in cell cultures:

Conclusion

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2020/05/15/the_costly_failure_to_update_sky-is-falling_predictions_143215.html

On March 6, Liz Specht, Ph.D., posted a thread on Twitter that immediately went viral.  As of this writing, it has received over 100,000 likes and almost 41,000 retweets, and was republished at Stat News.  It purported to “talk math” and reflected the views of “highly esteemed epidemiologists.” It insisted it was “not a hypothetical, fear-mongering, worst-case scenario,” and that, while the predictions it contained might be wrong, they would not be “orders of magnitude wrong.” It was also catastrophically incorrect.

The crux of Dr. Specht’s 35-tweet thread was that the rapid doubling of COVID-19 cases would lead to about 1 million cases by May 5, 4 million by May 11, and so forth.  Under this scenario, with a 10% hospitalization rate, we would expect approximately 400,000 hospitalizations by mid-May, which would more than overwhelm the estimated 330,000 available hospital beds in the country.  This would combine with a lack of protective equipment for health care workers and lead to them “dropping from the workforce for weeks at a time,” to shortages of saline drips and so forth. Half the world would be infected by the summer, and we were implicitly advised to buy dry goods and to prepare not to leave the house.

Interestingly, this thread was wrong not because we managed to bend the curve and stave off the apocalypse; for starters, Dr. Specht described the cancellation of large events and workplace closures as something that would shift things by only days or weeks.

Instead, this thread was wrong because it dramatically overstated our knowledge of the way the virus worked; it fell prey to the problem, common among experts, of failing to address adequately the uncertainty surrounding its point estimates.  It did so in two opposing ways. First, it dramatically understated the rate of spread. If serological tests are to be remotely believed, we likely hit the apocalyptic milestone of 2 million cases quite some time ago.  Not in the United States, mind you, but in New York City, where 20% of residents showed positive COVID-19 antibodies on April 23.  Fourteen percent of state residents showed antibodies, suggesting 2.5 million cases in the Empire State alone; since antibodies take a while to develop, this was likely the state of affairs in mid-April or earlier.

https://thefederalist.com/2020/05/15/new-report-unveils-the-extent-to-which-the-cdc-and-fda-lost-focus/

A new report from the conservative Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) peels back the curtain on just how much the nation’s preeminent public health institutions have pivoted to controlling lifestyle choices over preventing infectious diseases such as COVID-19.

CEI Senior Fellow Michelle Minton found that a vast majority of congressional funding allotted to the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) and Food and Drug Administration (FDA) went towards reinforcing public behavior while only a fraction of the agency budgets were targeted towards fighting emerging pathogens that have given rise to the public health pandemic today.

Of the roughly $7 billion granted to the CDC in 2019, just less than half went to infectious disease efforts where most went to fight existing viruses. More than $600 million focused on animal-related diseases, only a third of which was directed towards emerging threats. In other words, CDC resources for rising pathogens such as the novel Wuhan coronavirus, which is supposed to strike at the core of the CDC’s mission, received far less concern than hyping a moral panic around vaping.

“As its original name, the Communicable Disease Center implies, the initial purpose of the CDC was to assist the states in the control of infectious disease,” Minton wrote, noting that it came to be from efforts to combat malaria. Since its creation in 1946 Minton wrote, he CDC’s focus has expanded “to include conditions and diseases not caused by the spread of dangerous pathogens, but by lifestyle factors such as heart disease, cancer, and diabetes.”

The FDA meanwhile, is no less guilty. With a broader role to play in protecting the nation’s public health, the agency’s role in perpetuating healthy lifestyle choices such as maintaining a healthy diet and proper nutrition is far more justifiable. Alas, its aggressive action propelling hysteria surrounding electronic cigarettes led by former administrator Scott Gottlieb remains far off from the FDA’s goals or public interest and is killing smokers. Electronic cigarette use is the single most effective form of smoking cessation offering a lifeline to those trapped under addiction to combustible cigarettes which is the leading cause of preventable death in the United States.