PJ via Instapundit
Last week, a new peer-reviewed study of hydroxychloroquine’s effectiveness at treating the coronavirus was published*, and it found that the drug significantly reduced mortality rates.
*Arshad, S., Kilgore, P., Chaudhry, Z. S., Jacobsen, G., Wang, D. D., Huitsing, K., ... & O’Neill, W. (2020). Treatment with Hydroxychloroquine, Azithromycin, and Combination in Patients Hospitalized with COVID-19. International Journal of Infectious Diseases.
And by significantly, I mean it literally cut the mortality rate by more than half.
The study also determined that despite previous reports, there were no adverse effects on the heart.
President Trump has been touting hydroxychloroquine as a potential game-changer since mid-March after small studies showed it potentially served as an effective treatment for coronavirus patients. "I feel good about it. Just a feeling. I am a smart guy, we’ll see soon enough and we have certainly big samples of people," Trump said at the time. Since then, the media has desperately tried to undercut Trump’s positive message about hydroxychloroquine’s potential as a treatment for the coronavirus, calling it "unproven" and claiming there’s "no proof" that it works, and that certain at-risk people can die from the drug. They pounced when Dr. Anthony Fauci expressed reluctance to fully endorse the drug because there had not been clinical trials studying it’s effectiveness as a coronavirus treatment yet.
...Several studies came out linking hydroxychloroquine to a higher mortality rate. The media pounced on a U.S. Veterans Health Administration study supporting this claim, even though it wasn’t a clinical trial, but a small, non-peer-reviewed study of patients who were not representative of the entire population, and patients with severe cases of the coronavirus were also disproportionally administered the drug. A number of follow-up studies were also touted by the media as proof that the drug caused a higher rate of mortality, but then it was discovered those studies were based on bogus data, causing medical journals that published the studies to issue retractions.
...In March, Gretchen Whitmer banned the use of hydroxychloroquine or chloroquine to treat coronavirus patients, threatening doctors with "administrative action" if they prescribed it for that purpose. Eventually, she reversed course. Steve Sisolak, the Democrat governor of Nevada, also signed an emergency order restricting the use of chloroquine or hydroxychloroquine to treat the coronavirus.
...How many lives were lost because the Democrats and the media claimed that taking hydroxychloroquine would kill you? In May, Dr. John Giles of Columbia University told NPR that fears about hydroxychloroquine made it difficult to recruit volunteers for clinical studies. "Pretty much everybody said, ’well, that’s the drug that is dangerous to your heart,’ or ’I talked to friends and they said don’t take it,’ or ’I saw it on TV that it was dangerous,'" Giles explained. "It became almost impossible to get anyone interested."
But Giles knew these fears were unfounded. "It’s a very, very safe drug. It’s been used for over 75 years," he said.
Despite the drug being safe, Giles eventually gave up on doing his study.
He wasn’t alone. Dr. Christine Johnston at the University of Washington told NPR that volunteers felt "that the study and the drugs feel too political, and they just don’t want to participate at all."
And all this time, hydroxychloroquine has been shown to cut the death rate of the coronavirus in half.
...A Yale study published in May noted that "Five studies, including two controlled clinical trials, have demonstrated significant major outpatient treatment efficacy" of hydroxychloroquine alone or hydroxychloroquine combined with azithromycin. "These medications need to be widely available and promoted immediately for physicians to prescribe."
...Think about this: Had Democrats cared more about saving lives than the November election, more people would have been comfortable taking hydroxychloroquine as treatment. More people would have participated in clinical trials. More people would have recovered from the coronavirus. Instead, immediately after Trump started touting the drug, he was criticized and mocked by Democrats, the media, and even government officials. They ignored studies that showed it worked, pretended not to hear anecdotal evidence from patients who were successfully treated by the drug, and told people that hydroxychloroquine could kill them.
| Iblis also submitted this article, commenting, To be fair, for some the higher death rate is a feature, not a bug. |
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