05-22-2020, 04:30 PM
(05-22-2020, 12:48 PM)GMDino Wrote: https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2020/05/22/hydroxychloroquine-coronavirus-study/
Again, it is quite possible Trump is lying or doesn't even know what medication he is on.
I don't think there's enough (if any) evidence to say the drug is effective at treating Covid, but there's also not enough to say it's more dangerous to take it.
Right from the article it says, "The study, published Friday in the medical journal the Lancet, is the largest analysis to date of the risks and benefits of treating covid-19 patients with antimalarial drugs. It is based on a retrospective analysis of medical records, not a controlled study in which patients are divided randomly into treatment groups — a method considered the gold standard of medicine."
So all this study concludes is that the patients who were so sick they were given an experimental drug died at a higher rate than those with more milder symptoms. We really can't conclude anything from this study because it's purely observation. Understandably, anything covid related is just observation at this point, but without a control group (or any consistent basis of who and why the drug was given to certain patients) we really can't infer anything.
Did hospitals without enough ventilations given the drug as the only other option they had, and naturally had a higher death rate than more equipped hospitals? Did some hospitals give the drug any after positive tests? Did some give it just based on symptoms? Did some wait until positive cases got worse after a week? We have no idea of any of this