We have been told repeatedly by health experts to demonstrate the effectiveness of hydroxychloroquine and the other meds prescribed with it we need strict clinical trials. These are studies where some patients receive medication, and some do not. For many healthcare providers, this is a noxious thought if there is evidence to believe a treatment may work.
How do you ethically deny a potential treatment to an eligible patient to conduct a study? So-called double-blind studies described above are the preferred method advocated by Dr. Fauci. These double-blind studies allow people to die in the name of “science” if a drug is effective. They are in the “control group.”
There are ethical issues with this approach that researches at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center addressed with a new concurrent trial based on machine learning developed following the H1N1 pandemic. This method has been ignored by the NIH and FDA approval processes.
Such was the fate of the hydroxychloroquine, azithromycin, and zinc combination. Scientifically there was every reason to believe it would work. Clinically, doctors saw results when directly treating patients. Several recommended that the drug be produced in sufficient amounts and given early and outpatient.
President Trump expressed optimism based on studies in France and China, and the media freaked out. The president’s political opposition would go on to cling to any proof the drug would not work and suppress any information that it would. This politicization culminated in the horrific study published by Lancet that the publication quietly retracted.
However, the damage was already done. The World Health Organization suspended trials immediately after the study published in Lancet. Switzerland, which had been using the treatment, prohibited the use of the drug in COVID-19 shortly after that on May 27th. The retraction was so stealth that the ban was not lifted in Switzerland until June 11th.
This window allowed French researchers to analyze what happened in the entire population of COVID-19 patients during the ban. They used the case fatality rate (CFR) as the measure observed. The graph is stunning.
It also the only period where the Swiss CFR approached or exceeded that in France where there has been no use of hydroxychloroquine outside a few isolated trials.
The CFR returned to the highest level it had been since early in the pandemic at over 15%. Upon resumption of treatment with hydroxychloroquine, it returned to below 5%. A statistical analysis of the data:
A statistically significant difference
For those who are not convinced of the observational result, we conducted a statistical difference test by comparing the three periods: May 28th – June 8th, June 9th – 22nd, June 23rd – July 6th . The period from June 9th till the 22nd is that in which the index increased some 13 days after the suspension of hydroxychloroquine. There is of course an effect of delay between stopping the prescription of the drug and possible deaths, which explains the delay of 13 days.
We therefore observe that for the period from the 28th of May till the 8th of June, the index is 2.39% and then drops to 11.52% or 4.8 times more and then drops to 3%.
When testing for statistical significance between the various observations, the difference is significant at 99% with a p <0.0001. 13 days after the HCQ prescription was resumed, the index dropped to 3% and this was again a significant effect.
For those who have forgotten statistics, a p-value of 0.05 or less indicates statistical significance. If the graph is not convincing, a confidence interval of 99% in a statistical analysis based on full population data should be.
Between this information and a study published by researchers in India, it is time for the media to do a mea culpa. Their hysteria convinced politicians in the United States to ban or restrict the drug. As Dr. David Samadi said on The Larry O’Connor Show, the decision to use this treatment needs to be left between a doctor and a patient. He has been disturbed by the interference by the government into the doctor-patient relationship.
Dr. Samadi re-emphasized the use of hydroxychloroquine cocktail is effective in early COVID-19 according to clinical experience and multiple studies. The FDA and NIH need to tell governors and other officials who have banned its use to lift their bans ASAP and tell pharmacists to stop questioning doctors who prescribe it.
It is far preferable to keep people out of the hospital using an old, inexpensive, and demonstrably safe and effective medication combination. There is no reason other than profit to wait until patients are hospitalized to get a new medication IV. If the media or the public health agencies cared about public health, this would be broadcast loudly and often. It is becoming increasingly clear they care more about politics.
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