HYDROXY-CHLOROQINE TESTS
We can expect to see some of the results from the early HCQ tests in the next week or so. Preliminary reports (and these are still just anecdotal) are that there will be little if any significant results found. Unfortunately, with desperate hope for some treatment, I fear that the talking heads and online blogs will be filled with the following statements.
“These studies were done incorrectly; we have plenty of reports of people who have been cured.”
These are the comments from people who so want the treatment to work that they don’t want to accept results that don’t support what they wish for. The earliest trials will most likely have focused on generalized treatment of severely ill patients. Of those groups there WILL be people who recover and who are eventually discharged. The problem will be that there will most likely be no difference between the percentages of people who recover in these hospitals versus those in other hospitals. More importantly, without true placebo controls, even the results within a particular hospital are suspect. Nevertheless, supporters will always be able to point to a particular patient who “was on death’s door, and after treatment he miraculously recovered and has now been released from the hospital.”
“HCQ is a cheap generic drug and the Pharmaceutical Companies can’t make a profit off of it, so they are manipulating the results to show no effect”.
This is a particularly insidious argument because it plays into so many concerns of Americans that healthcare is solely driven by profit. There will be little that can be argued that will change these minds.
“Of course, those studies didn’t work. HCQ must be combined with (take your choice of one, several or all), azithromycin, Vitamin C, Vitamin B, Zinc Sulfate, Colloidal Silver, Strawberry yogurt, the southern, sunny exposed side of the hospital.”
This argument is akin to reaching for straws. It is based on a commitment to the fact that HCQ is actually a cure, but that it is being used incorrectly; maybe the dosages are wrong, the length of treatment is wrong, whether it is taken orally or IV, etc. Once again the rejection of facts in favor of irrational hope is tough to fight.
“The HCQ that was used was the wrong type. It came from India (or China, or Bulgaria, etc.) and we can’t be sure that it was truly active chemically.”
Again, this is just an excuse in order to reject the factual findings.