Breaking ranks

For a nice change of pace, one of the President's political opponents responds to him like a human being. Earlier I predicted that, if chloroquine proved effective, the press would switch instantly to complaining that President Trump didn't provide it quickly enough. It looks like we have an intermediate step to get through, which is to suspect that he's making money off of supplying it to needy people.

10 comments:

Anonymous said...

Doesn’t it warm the cockles of your heart that some Covid positive old folks (without consent or family notice) are being given this snake oil? It’s in Texas City yeehaw! After all, your Lt Guv did endorse old folks sacrifices for the economic good.

Assistant Village Idiot said...

I am increasingly suspicious that the treatment is not going to work.

Not blaming Trump in any way. Not his job.

Grim said...

It might work or not. I think we don’t really understand how this disease is different from other similar viruses.

james said...

Getting good data demands care. There are plenty of people who know how to use it, and people on the front lines who have the raw information; the problem is getting it from the latter to the former in a useful fashion.

And if, as I suspect, "work" means keeping cases from turning extreme, you'll need to be treating (and not treating) an awful lot more people than if "work" means "cure serious cases." It won't tell you what you need to know in the short term if you don't couple dosing with testing.

Anonymous said...

If the French experience and others holds true, the combination treatment will work very well for many people. Not all, and not always, but for many.

At this point, I'm cautiously optimistic.

LittleRed1

Texan99 said...

Agreed, the efficacy of chloroquine is still iffy. I haven't given up on it, by any means, but by now I was hoping for something more definitive. Many people who improve on it might have improved anyway. We may be hearing more of the stories from people who felt better right away, and not from the ones who got worse--even died.

At the same time, it's too early to write it off. That's every bit as obvious a case of getting ahead of the evidence. We'll just have to see. Luckily it's a cheap drug with relatively mild side effects.

I hope Boris Johnson is getting convalescent serum, though, or whatever else seems to be working best.

E Hines said...

It's beginning to look like the direct damage done by Wuhan Virus molecules isn't all that. It achieves its threatening effect by removing the iron ions from the heme molecules and by overstimulating the immune system's action in the lungs, leading to a strong pneumonia-like development in the lower lungs.

The chloroquine variants work, in its on-label uses, by softening the immune system's overreaction in its originally targeted diseases, which tend to be immune system attackers. Thus, they reduce the cytokine storms that lead to the pneumonia-like effect in the lungs. It also is beginning to look like the variants also tend to disarm the virus molecules' ability to extract the iron ions, leaving the heme molecules capable of O2 and CO2 transport and exchange in the lungs.

...if, as I suspect, "work" means keeping cases from turning extreme, you'll need to be treating (and not treating) an awful lot more people than if "work" means "cure serious cases."

I haven't heard anyone serious argue that the chloroquine variants are cures, only that they're mitigators to lower the peak loads on hospitals. There are anecdotal reports that after a few days on chloroquine with azithromycin no Wuhan Virus molecules remain in detectable numbers. Those reports badly want corroboration, though. Which we may start getting in a few days in New York.

...if you don't couple dosing with testing.

I haven't heard anyone serious argue otherwise here, either. Live fire testing and controlled testing certainly can occur in parallel in exigent circumstances.

Eric Hines

Grim said...

So the Bulgarians were right? Hard liquor, tonic water, and tough it out? I guess that's worked often enough it was worth trying.

ymarsakar said...

The human geniuses and SMEs have finally started figuring out that they don't know what they don't know.

https://web.archive.org/web/20200405061401/https://medium.com/@agaiziunas/covid-19-had-us-all-fooled-but-now-we-might-have-finally-found-its-secret-91182386efcb

ymarsakar said...

The previous theory is that Wuhan's 5g network in 2019, caused an affect on the oxygen that hemoglobin and the lungs could utilize, resulting in a dramatic decrease in oxygen absorption if the lungs become compromised. And China has a lot of smog to compromise it so most people thought it was just the junk they were inhaling that was causing the short of breath issues.