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Hasn't gotten wide media attention. I wonder why...
Surely there are medical experts here who can weigh in.
From layperson’s perspective, looks like this “retrospective” “observational” study suffers from a few big flaws:
1. not randomized
2. no placebo (not treated is not the same as placebo)
3. for those who didn’t get either medication, the majority were OVER 65 years old (251 or 64.1%) vs younger than 65 years old (158 or 38.6%). In contrast, the treatment groups were reversed: over half were younger than 65 while less than half were OLDER than 65. Given that we know mortality is higher in people over 65 with covid, does it surprise anyone the no treatment group had slightly more deaths? Maybe the effect is due to the skewed age groups rather than the effect of the drug. That’s why they say randomized, blinded trials are the best evidence. And so far, all of them stopped early due to harm.
Hasn't gotten wide media attention. I wonder why...
Because the paper was released just yesterday? Because multiple studies have already shown no benefit? But if the drug actually proves beneficial, then good. One more tool in the toolkit.
It looks like the dosing is about half that of the emergency use recommendation guidelines, so perhaps the lower dosage is a factor in the trial's success?
Surely there are medical experts here who can weigh in.
From layperson’s perspective, looks like this “retrospective” “observational” study suffers from a few big flaws:
1. not randomized
2. no placebo (not treated is not the same as placebo)
3. for those who didn’t get either medication, the majority were OVER 65 years old (251 or 64.1%) vs younger than 65 years old (158 or 38.6%). In contrast, the treatment groups were reversed: over half were younger than 65 while less than half were OLDER than 65. Given that we know mortality is higher in people over 65 with covid, does it surprise anyone the no treatment group had slightly more deaths? Maybe the effect is due to the skewed age groups rather than the effect of the drug. That’s why they say randomized, blinded trials are the best evidence. And so far, all of them stopped early due to harm.
The observational study that showed hydroxychloroquine didn't help was all over the news. No one - even Fauci- was criticizing it for only being an observational study. Then it got retraced for using bogus sources.
The observational study that showed hydroxychloroquine didn't help was all over the news. No one - even Fauci- was criticizing it for only being an observational study. Then it got retraced for using bogus sources.
They call it surprising. lol Trump said it could work so it's surprising when it does.
Observational studies are just that, observational. They are suggestive but not the best level of evidence to prove effectiveness of a drug. Many in the public were skeptical of the small, observational studies coming out early on showing promise of hcq. That’s why people went on to conduct blinded, randomized, placebo trials that minimized a lot of the biases that plague observational studies and biases that limit conclusions that can be drawn from observational studies.
Like how this study ended up with crazy skewed age groups. The median age of those who got hcq was 53 in this study, while the median age of those who didn’t get hcq was 71. Those who got HCQ were a lot younger than those who didn’t get treatment. The benefit you see could easily be explained by the differences in age, rather than hcq. Lets also not forget the confounding factor that over 78% of the patients who got hcq also got STEROIDS. Yikes. Can you tell why laypeople like myself aren’t super excited about the results of this observational study? Sure, the younger people had lower risk of death. But I don’t know what that says about hcq.
That’s why high quality, prospective, randomized, blinded trials with placebos are done. And all of the high quality studies have been stopped due to ineffectiveness or harm. We, the public, are not surprised. We just read these studies with too-good-to-be-true conclusions with a cautious eye.
Love those Trumpsters. Whatever their dear leader does is great. I guess next they’ll tell us to take sips of Clorox to make your insides free of this virus.
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