re: Great news! Azithromycin & Chloroquine: victory lap

I don’t walk to come across as balking at this. I am excited about the possibility (I’m an ER doctor and the courage of the nurses and even some doctors is already starting to falter). I truly hope this is the cure. But many studies for other diseases have had way more promising and rigorous studies than this; and those have turned out to be failures. I have learned to temper my expectations. I am still hopeful though!

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This quoted study is so small. For all we know the treatment and control groups might not have been adequately randomized. Let’s say I wanted to study Splenda for covid 19. So I gave it to 20 patients with mild illness and did nothing for 20 patients with moderate illness. Afterwards the Splenda patients did better than the control group. Was it because of the Splenda or because the control group was sicker to start with. That’s just an example of why some studies are better than others

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So your objection is that what we are seeing could just be a coincidence?

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It is one concern. Another is that it does not address then dozens of other variables out there. To reiterate, I am happy to see these results. It shows promise for sure. But I’ve seen the medical community collectively disappointed after much better studies. I’d hate to see nationwide disappointment

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I’m not suggesting you are and I appreciate your insight. I’m just trying to figure out what the issues are with the study.

There are all kinds of facets to this question.

Does this actually help?

The results are early but it likely helps.

Does it help only those critically ill?

Again results are early and only tested on really sick patients.

What we are doing now is extrapolating data based on mechanisms of action and results we saw.

My thoughts, which are worth little at this point are as follows.

We know this helps against multiple other viruses. We are not sure why. Some think that it inhibitors viruses getting into cells to replicate.

If this is the case it helps in those critically ill patients. Zithromax is an antibiotic and many antibiotics have some minor amount of anti-inflammatory function, again of unknown origin. Hcq also can be immunomodulatory.

So you have drugs that potentially inhibit viral replication and limit the formation of ards along with an antibiotic to help prevent infections and pneumonia.

This may be why it helps critically ill patients but by that same token it likely helps those in the early phase of the infection even more to prevent even getting to those stages.

Again all this is very early and we may be way off base here.

Another thing is there is a 10k healthcare workers study testing just hcq as a prophylaxis to prevent even getting sick.

Now there are multiple questions here. Does prevent getting sick mean prevent getting the virus at all? Or can you get the virus, hey immunity, and not get suck with this? If you do have it but have no symptoms can you pass it on to other people?

Tons of questions about this whole thing. Imagine if you take a couple of doses of this a week and you will not get suck from this. If you still get the virus but then become immune, we don't even need to vaccinate.

But imagine if we can use this as a bridge to vaccine which I suspect will be out in 4 more months?

Tons of questions but tons of reasons to be optimistic about this thing.

This doesn’t require FDA approval.

This course of treatment is already in use and is about to be the standard.

Or maybe it’s better to alive with side effects than dead.

I get what you are saying, but there is not enough time for long term trials. That will come in due time.

I think the fact that the nations that are seeing the most improvements in progressing from the pandemic (S Korea and China) have it as standard of care is encouraging, if you can believe their numbers.

Does anyone have insight on the other studies on this particular combination from around the world even if in vitro? What studies are being done around the world currently studying this combination and resdimivir and when will those studies’ preliminary results be available?

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Tons of questions about this whole thing.

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Indeed. Great post. Highlights many of unknowns.

Many want a very orthogonal answer. Understandable. But given the sparse data “we don’t know” is a perfectly fine answer. People forget admitting what one doesn’t know is very much part of the scientific process.

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random bs site

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Good god man, how many fricking times does this have to be explained to that this is false. You’re the epitome of a pea-brained moron.